Adyen N.V. (AMS:ADYEN)
Netherlands flag Netherlands · Delayed Price · Currency is EUR
818.00
-126.00 (-13.35%)
Oct 28, 2026, 5:38 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q3 2026

Oct 28, 2026

Summary

Q3 net revenue rose 22% on a constant-currency basis and processed volume grew 30%. Growth was broad-based, while investment in Orb, Talon.One, and hiring increased, with FY EBITDA margin guidance set at 50%.

Ingo Uytdehaage
Co-CEO, Adyen

Let me start how we worked in the third quarter on the framework that we outlined during the first half results. In this framework, we talked about how we implement a strategy delivering value across the full commercial life cycle, because that's what our customers are expecting from us. In the third quarter, this has been very successful. Net revenue grew on a constant currency basis, 22% to EUR 738 million. Processed volume increased to EUR 451 billion. The financial results are solid. What I'm very proud of is the fact that the same engine runs as always. We win share of wallet with our existing customers, and we added new logos to the platform. This combination has always been the core of our growth, and it drives on the operational complexity that we are solving for these customers.

That is crucial to me, and that's also what I'd like to talk about today in these remarks. I'm often asked how we fit in the conversation around AI. For me, what is crucial here is that we have always powered the financial infrastructure for the global tech players. It's been our focus for the recent years, and our core strength has always been that we partnered with the most complex enterprises. Many of the companies that we work for are now building the new foundation for this new technology. It's the major hyperscalers, it's the cloud companies, and they've relied on us for years. Just to give you an idea, about 10% of our volume right now is with these few companies that are so successful.

They partner with us because their commercial models, whether that's subscriptions or usage-based billing or complicated enterprise setups, it requires global reach. It requires local payment methods. It requires a very high authorization rate. That's the reason why they work with us. That's also the reason why they continue to grow with us. In short, we manage multi-market scale and complexity better than anyone else. This is exactly why those businesses turn to us and why we have the opportunity to change the models also for the companies that start to implement more AI-related business models. Then there's this next wave of AI companies. AI companies that grow faster than we've ever seen in history. The beauty is that also their complexity increases as fast we have ever seen in history, and we are the company that can solve that complexity for them.

What is the complexity that I'm talking about? It's the complexity of going to multiple countries, wanting to have the highest authorization rates, making sure that global payouts work as you would expect. That's when we start to help them. What I find very important, that is exactly in line with our strategy, is the land and expand strategy. We solve one problem for them, we gain trust, and then over time, we gain more volumes. This is exactly the long-term partnerships that we've built with all the companies that are on our platform and that we have grown over time. For me, the key thing is also for the new AI companies, we win when the complexity increases. That's the key thing that I've learned also in the recent quarters when we become relevant to them.

And we are very well positioned here with our own banking licenses in multiple countries, with our own acquiring licenses and a single platform globally. I am often asked what our position is in agentic commerce, and it is important to make a distinction between agentic commerce and the AI economy that I just talked about. If you look at global commerce, it runs today on Adyen, and so will agentic commerce in the future. It is still early days, and we are focused right now on making sure that we build that right foundation. That right foundation is making sure that we work with the AI frontier models to get the protocols right, that we work with our merchants to understand what their needs are, making sure that they continue to have a relationship with the shopper behind the agent. That is what we are focused on.

The reason why we are so well positioned is because we have built all the different components that are needed for agentic commerce in the past. So we have built authentication layer, we have built fraud systems, we have built ways to make the settlement as efficient as possible, and that is exactly the infrastructure that you need to build. No one has this infrastructure like we do, and that is why we are so well positioned. So in summary, over the years we have built the right rails for agentic commerce, and the key differentiator for us now is that we have built an open system for our customers. So making sure that our merchants continue to build a relationship with the shoppers behind the agents, and also continue to build the right loyalty relationships with their shoppers.

Yeah, the other big news of the first half year, of course, were the acquisitions of Orb and Talon.One, and I am very excited to see how integration is going. It is also one of the reasons why we have decided to double down our investments in this area. Maybe to start with Orb. Orb is a billing and invoice engine, focused on usage-based billing, which is exactly very relevant for the AI native economy. What I have seen in the last quarter is that we are now capable of signing up customers at an earlier stage in their life cycle. Examples here are Vercel and Greptile. Also what I have seen in the last quarter, that we were capable of signing up customers that were already an Orb customer but are now starting to transfer their payments to Adyen.

Examples here are Route and Wasabi Technologies. A lot of progress with Orb. Very similar with Talon.One, the moment we announced the acquisition, the feedback from retailers has been very positive. The unsolved problem of loyalty in store is something that they are looking for. In the past quarter, we have worked together with a lot of retailers to see how exactly we are going to tackle these problems. In a couple of weeks, we have organized an event with 200 global retailers in London to showcase how the future of loyalty will look like. Of course, I am very excited to see those customers there and to discuss it with them. We are talking today about operational complexity, and this is exactly how Talon.One and Orb fit into the Adyen strategy.

Like how can we solve the most complicated problems for our merchants and for invoice billing and loyalty, these are unsolved problems that we are helping customers with right now. I'm very excited where we are right now in the year. I'm looking forward to the rest of the year, still a quarter to go, and have very high confidence in the results for the rest of the year and the direction that we're taking strategically. I'd like to hand over now to Hwa, who's going to give you an update on our financial performance.

Hwa Tsao
Interim CFO, Adyen

Thanks, Ingo, and hello, everyone. In the third quarter, net revenue reached EUR 738 million, up 23% year-over-year or 22% on a constant currency basis, in line with our expectations and full-year guidance. Processed volume grew 30% to EUR 451 billion, well ahead of the market as we continue to gain share with our merchants. Three core engines drove this top-line performance. First, we deepened share of wallet with existing enterprise merchants as longer-standing cohorts consolidated more of their global volume onto our single platform. Winning a greater share of volumes from these merchants is the largest contributor to our growth. Second, we onboarded a healthy, high-quality cohort of new enterprise customers across our priority verticals. This year's cohort is shaping up to be our largest ever. These customers are larger and many are platforms. We expect them to ramp significantly over the next year.

Third, we consolidated Talon.One and Orb for the first time, which together added about 2 percentage points to our constant currency net revenue growth in the quarter. Commercial momentum remains strong and broad-based across all three pillars in every region. Looking at our pillars. In Q3, digital net revenue grew to EUR 387 million, up 16% year-over-year, or 14% on a constant currency basis. Volume was up 28%. We delivered particularly strong growth in travel and mobility, which includes major rideshare platforms and online travel agencies, and also across content and subscriptions merchants. This segment includes the major hyperscalers, where we continue to grow our share of wallet. Our tiered pricing is designed so that as our largest merchants scale, they consolidate more volume onto our platform, driving continuous wallet share gains.

In unified commerce, net revenue reached EUR 250 million, up 29% year-over-year, or 27% on a constant currency basis. Volume grew 22%. Net revenue outpaced volume in the quarter following the consolidation of Talon.One, which contributes recurring revenue, but no processed payment volume. We now support 499 enterprise merchants processing across both in-store and digital channels at scale. We intentionally target growth from larger, more complex global retailers, and these multi-channel implementations represent deep customer relationships where the value we deliver drives substantial share gains. Platforms net revenue hit EUR 100 million, up 46% year-over-year, or 44% on a constant currency basis. Volume grew 55%. We now have 46 platform customers processing over EUR 1 billion annually. A significant step up from 37 last quarter and 31 a year ago, with active business customers reaching 312,000, up 48% year-over-year.

We're growing rapidly across SaaS and winning share in complex verticals like financial services and insurance, which will be a driver of future growth. Our platforms business allows us to distribute our payments and embedded financial products directly to smaller merchants at scale, creating a meaningful advantage for Adyen and a durable growth channel. Let me spend a few minutes on our team and our strategic plan. The momentum we see gives us substantial confidence in the opportunity ahead, and we have decided to step up our investment to capture it. Two things drive that decision. First, our core business continues to perform. We are winning new enterprise merchants. Our existing merchants keep consolidating volume with us, and we see significant runway across all markets. Second, merchant interest in Talon.One and Orb has been stronger than we initially anticipated.

Retailers we talk to are extremely excited to unify loyalty across every channel. AI native companies see the value in a single provider for billing and payments. Only Adyen can provide all of these solutions on a unified platform and at scale. That's what gives us the confidence to act now. Serving our global enterprise merchants takes more product engineering and go-to-market capacity, so we are accelerating our investment. These are growth acquisitions, and we are doubling down to rapidly achieve their potential. On the team, in Q3, we added 177 net new FTEs on an underlying basis, bringing us to 426 year-to-date , and 399 colleagues joined us from Talon.One and Orb. We ended the quarter with 5,596 FTEs. For the full year, we continue to expect 550- 650 net new hires on an underlying basis.

Including Talon.One and Orb and the additional hiring we are now doing in those businesses, we expect to add 1,000- 1,100 FTEs in total. Our hiring remains targeted on specialized engineering and go-to-market roles with a growing share in North America, our biggest focus market. These are competitive talent markets, and we are making greater use of equity in our compensation to attract and keep the people we need. These decisions are reflected in our outlook. For the full year 2026, we continue to expect constant currency net revenue growth between 21% and 23%. We intend to continue investing to win more of our addressable market given the size of the opportunity ahead. When we see high-conviction growth opportunities, including the strong merchant pull for Orb and Talon.One, we move decisively.

We are deliberately increasing our investment base to capture these platform opportunities, and we now expect our 2026 EBITDA margin to land at 50%. Over the long run, our business model produces compounding operational leverage. On capital expenditures, we maintain our guidance at 7% of net revenue in 2026 and expect to normalize CapEx toward historical levels thereafter. Turning to capital allocation, Adyen generates significant cash flows and has a strong balance sheet. S&P Global Ratings recently upgraded our outlook to positive while reaffirming our A-minus rating. The positive S&P update gives us a clearer indication of our balance sheet opportunity and ability to use capital to accelerate value. How we intend to deploy capital has not changed. It starts with what it takes to run our business, which includes regulatory and operational capital to settle our merchants reliably every day.

Beyond that, our priorities are investing in organic growth, then inorganic opportunities like Talon.One and Orb, and finally, returning capital to shareholders. We continue to evaluate all the tools available to us, and capital returns are part of that toolbox. To wrap up, we enter the final stretch of 2026 with strong commercial momentum across all three pillars, high conviction in our strategic investments, and confidence in our unique ability to capture the massive opportunity ahead. We intend to continue to outgrow our market as the scope of what we solve increases across the commerce life cycle. Our actions this year position us to grow our role within customer operations, extend our market leadership, and expand our growth opportunity.