Technology

Europe’s Stripe rival Adyen dives 28% after slowest sales growth on record

Published

2 years ago

August 17, 2023

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The Adyen logo displayed on a smartphone.

Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images

Shares of Adyen, the European payments giant taking on U.S. titan Stripe, fell nearly 28% on Thursday after the company reported worse-than-expected sales and a profit drop in the first half of the year.

Here’s how the company performed:

Revenue of 739.1 million euros ($804.3 million) over January to June 2023, up 21% from a year ago. This came in below analyst estimates of 853.6 million euros of revenue and 40% of year-on-year growth, according to Eikon data.
EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of 320 million euros, down 10% from 356.3 million euros in the first half of 2022. The first-half 2023 result matches an analyst prediction of 320 million euros profit.

Adyen attributed the tepid print to increased hiring, firmer wages and to a shift in its North American customers’ business prioritization from growth to cost savings in the first half of the year.

The company reported much slower sales growth than a year earlier — in the first half of 2022, the company said revenues grew 37% year-over-year.

“We’ve been quite open that since the beginning of 2022 we really want to invest in the business and to do that we needed to grow the team,” Ethan Tandowsky, Adyen’s CFO, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Thursday.

“We see a real opportunity in payments and in the financial services space.”

Adyen is one of the biggest fintech firms in Europe, with a market capitalization of 35.4 billion euros. The company provides payment services to the likes of Netflix, Meta, Microsoft and Spotify.

The firm also said that inventory write-offs led to a 6.3 million euro hit to EBITDA.

It competes directly with online payment staples, such as PayPal, Stripe, Block — formerly known as Square — and Fiserv.

Adyen — and other payment companies — benefited heavily in previous years from the rise in demand for e-commerce and digital payment options resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.

More recently, these companies have been hit by a tidal wave of negative economic events, including the Russia-Ukraine war, higher interest rates, rising inflation and a slump in global equity markets.

Investors have soured on fintech, as a high-interest rate environment decreases the appeal of growth-oriented companies that typically depend on raising cash.

The company primarily makes money off a small slice of the overall transactions charged to merchants’ bank accounts. Payments is an overall massive but incredibly competitive market, which hosts plenty of different players.

Adyen, identified among the top 200 global fintech companies globally by CNBC and Statista, is betting on the fact that a unified single payments platform gives merchants access to a variety of services, from debit cards and buy now, pay later options to mobile wallets like Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Technology

SpaceX aims for $800 billion valuation in secondary share sale, WSJ reports

Published

10 hours ago

December 6, 2025

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SpaceX aims for 0 billion valuation in secondary share sale, WSJ reports

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is initiating a secondary share sale that would give the company a valuation of up to $800 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

SpaceX is also telling some investors it will consider going public possibly around the end of next year, the report said.

At the elevated price, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor would be valued above ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which wrapped up a share sale at a $500 billion valuation in October.

SpaceX has been investing heavily in reusable rockets, launch facilities and satellites, while competing for government contracts with newer space players, including Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin. SpaceX is far ahead, and operates the world’s largest network of satellites in low earth orbit through Starlink, which powers satellite internet services under the same brand name.

A SpaceX IPO would include its Starlink business, which the company previously considered spinning out.

Musk recently discussed whether SpaceX would go public during Tesla‘s annual shareholders meeting last month. Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, said he doesn’t love running publicly traded businesses, in part because they draw “spurious lawsuits,” and can “make it very difficult to operate effectively.”

However, Musk said during the meeting that he wanted to “try to figure out some way for Tesla shareholders to participate in SpaceX,” adding, “maybe at some point, SpaceX should become a public company despite all the downsides.”

WATCH: What retail investors should know about OpenAI and SpaceX

Technology

Judge finalizes remedies in Google antitrust case

Published

11 hours ago

December 5, 2025

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Judge finalizes remedies in Google antitrust case

The logo for Google LLC is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 17, 2021.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

A U.S. judge on Friday finalized his decision for the consequences Google will face for its search monopoly ruling, adding new details to the decided remedies.

Last year, Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search, and in September, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the Department of Justice.

That included the proposal of a forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser, which provides data that helps the company’s advertising business deliver targeted ads. Alphabet shares popped 8% in extended trading as investors celebrated what they viewed as minimal consequences from a historic defeat last year in the landmark antitrust case.

Investors largely shrugged off the ruling as non-impactful to Google. However some told CNBC it’s still a bite that could “sting.”

Mehta on Friday issued additional details for his ruling in new filings.

“The age-old saying ‘the devil is in the details’ may not have been devised with the drafting of an antitrust remedies judgment in mind, but it sure does fit,” Mehta wrote in one of the Friday filings.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously said it will appeal the remedies.

In August 2024, Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act and held a monopoly in search and related advertising. The antitrust trial started in September 2023.

In his September decision, Mehta said the company would be able to make payments to preload products, but it could not have exclusive contracts that condition payments or licensing. Google was also ordered to loosen its hold on search data. Mehta in September also ruled that Google would have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data, though “not ads data.”

The DOJ had asked Google to stop the practice of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.

The judge’s September ruling didn’t end the practice entirely — Mehta ruled out that Google couldn’t enter into exclusive deals, which was a win for the company. Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Mehta’s new details

In the Friday filings, Mehta wrote that Google cannot enter into any deal like the one it’s had with Apple “unless the agreement terminates no more than one year after the date it is entered.”

This includes deals involving generative artificial intelligence products, including any “application, software, service, feature, tool, functionality, or product” that involve or use genAI or large-language models, Mehta wrote.

GenAI “plays a significant role in these remedies,” Mehta wrote.

The judge also reiterated the web index data it will require Google to share with certain competitors.

Google has to share some of the raw search interaction data it uses to train its ranking and AI systems, but it does not have to share the actual algorithms — just the data that feeds them.” In September, Mehta said those data sets represent a “small fraction” of Google’s overall traffic, but argued the company’s models are trained on data that contributed to Google’s edge over competitors.

The company must make this data available to qualified competitors at least twice, one of the Friday filing states. Google must share that data in a “syndication license” model whose term will be five years from the date the license is signed, the filing states.

Mehta on Friday also included requirements on the makeup of a technical committee that will determine the firms Google must share its data with.

Committee “members shall be experts in some combination of software engineering, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, economics, behavioral science, and data privacy and data security,” the filing states.

The judge went on to say that no committee member can have a conflict of interest, such as having worked for Google or any of its competitors in the six months prior to or one year after serving in the role.

Google is also required to appoint an internal compliance officer that will be responsible “for administering Google’s antitrust compliance program and helping to ensure compliance with this Final Judgment,” per one of the filings. The company must also appoint a senior business executive “whom Google shall make available to update the Court on Google’s compliance at regular status conferences or as otherwise ordered.”

This is breaking news. Check back for updates.