Worldline shares dive on Q4 results, new CEO
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The news: Shares in French tech player Worldline plummeted after the payments company reported yearly revenues below estimates on Wednesday.
The numbers: The company’s quarterly sales were down 0.9% in organic terms, with analysts expecting a 0.1% decline. Similarly, its annual sales, at €4.63 billion fell just short of the €4.64 billion expected by analysts.
Shares in the €2.1 billion online payments firm dropped 15% to €6.30 in early trading.
The context: Worldline also announced that Pierre-Antoine Vacheron would take over from Gilles Grapinet as CEO, who would issue a more comprehensive outlook for the company in April.
The company said that 2025 growth should remain in line with 2024, having cut its growth forecast to around 1% in September.
Worldline shares are trading at near record lows as consumers are less reliant on digital payments as they were during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the company was trading at its peak. The fintech is one of the EU’s largest PaaS providers, but is increasingly underperforming compared to local peers such as Ayden.
What they said: Grégory Lambertie, CFO of Worldline, said: "Thanks to our teams’ efforts to tackle specific challenges faced during the summer, we managed to deliver our 2024 financial results despite a slowdown in Europe. We remained focused on cost control across the organization as demonstrated by our free cash flow performance.
"Furthermore, following a decade of market consolidation, we have started our portfolio pruning so as to refocus on our core activity and drive value creation for all stakeholders in the medium term.”
The source: Worldline Results
