Trading Post: Global Payments Buyout Report Juices Payments Stocks, The Retail Trade, Hong Kong Calling Once Again

Trading Post November 2, 2026: Global Payments Buyout Report Juices Payments Stocks, The Retail Trade, Hong Kong Calling Once Again

Opportunity in the Worst-Ever Year for Consumer Sentiment & the CPIV15

Michael Burry

Nov 02, 2026

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Share

Bloomberg

reported late last week on a

Financial Times

claim that

Global Payments (GPN)

is being pursued by

Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R)

, an old-line private equity (PE) firm with ~

$90 billion

under management.

Global Payments shares quickly rise as much as 18% as the Financial Times reports that Clayton Dubilier & Rice is pursuing a take-private deal of the payments processor, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Other payment companies gain: Fidelity National Information Services +6.2%, Shift4 +4.7%, Fiserv +4.3%, Flywire +1.6%, PayPal +1.1%

CD&R has teamed up with private equity group GTCR, Global Payments’ biggest shareholder, on a joint bid for the payment processor: FT

Talks are ongoing and a deal may not materialize

Any deal would likely involve a premium, people told FT

Deal would be one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history, report says

I covered the Payments stocks January of this year.

The Payments Giants: FEE FI FOUR Umm…

Michael Burry

·

Jan 15

Is it ok to invest in an acquisition-happy company that follows the WorldCom playbook for accounting tricks?

Read full story

My view, from the point of view of a minority shareholder, has been that

Global Payments

had little value as a serial acquirer doomed to continue buying companies at a poor rate of return. However, with the rumor that

Global Payments

has become a PE firm’s target, the shares rallied to $96.84, giving the company a market cap of about $25.6 billion paired to net financial debt of about $17 billion.

GAAP profitability

has been minimal, and the last twelve months shows nearly a $1 billion loss. As Global Payments tells it, it is wildly profitable on a heavily

adjusted

basis.

Here I present 1 of 8 slides from

Global Payments’s

recent quarterly presentation explaining its

non-GAAP

presentation of earnings.

The full presentation, for your entertainment.

Q2 2026 Earnings Presentation Gpn

1.78MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Below, legacy payments processor stocks have had a rough time in the market for years now. Part of the non-AI anti-momentum trade.

Fiserv (gold)

looks to have cut out sometime last year, but actually it just dropped so very far. Its continuation down near 5-year lows is right there with the other two.

In light of the buyout interest, I calculate an optimistic

“control premium” version of Global Payments’s

IV15

- as in, the implied price at which a 15% annualized return expected if the company were under the control of better capital allocators. I come to $45-$60 as that

CPIV15

.

Still, the current price is roughly two times its

CPIV15

. The math here is one of about 10% implied return from the current price for a control stake. This is full value, under the assumption that the private equity owner has recognized the problem with Global Payment’s poor serial acquisition record.

CD&R

may want to continue acquisitions. If so, I assume they will be better acquisitions. As well, I imagine CD&R sees costs that can be squeezed, cash flows that can be better maximized.

Private equity may or may not understand this space well enough to manage a significant return from this deal - and prior large M&A and deal activity in the space have had spotty results at best. If

CD&R

is simply eyeing the

Worldpay buyout at 9.8x EBITDA or the

Issuer takeout at 12.3x

as relevant exit comps, that would be a road to disappointment, in my view.

Nevertheless, a buyout of

Global Payments

should validate the value of the other legacy payment networks. Perhaps even put them in play.

As a

financial buyer

,

CD&R

theoretically sees cash flow, a strategy shift, numbers that make the company worth more than the price it pays. This is as opposed to a

strategic buyer

, which often buys with an eye to synergies and competitive positioning in addition to cash flow and other financial considerations.

Strategic buyers tend to pay higher prices than financial buyers

.

For this reason,

financial buyer takeouts make decent valuation comparisons

for the minority shareholders, or potential investors, in comparable companies.

Notably,

CD&R

is not alone. It has help on the inside, as

GTCR

, another private equity firm, is

Global Payments’s

largest institutional holder with roughly 15% of the company that it received when Global Payments bought Worldpay from GTCR and Fidelity National.

GTCR

has likely been underwater on this mark, and this deal could bring the deal back to par, or a little better, for the firm.

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Similar optimistic pricing applied to companies such as

Fidelity National Information Services (FIS)

and

Fiserv (FISV)

brings target prices for both much higher than my IV15 for each.

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