ADYEN Take Rate Fell Back Below Last Year's Level — Was the Reversal Ever Real?

The Reversal That Didn't Survive a Third Half

H1 2025 and FY2025 told a two-part story: take rate^» rose for two consecutive halves - 16.8 bps in H1 2025, 17.1 bps in H2 2025 - after two straight years of decline, but the increase was mechanically tied to a single unnamed mega-customer's shrinking processed volume rather than obviously broad-based pricing power. This half breaks the streak in the other direction: take rate landed at 16.2 bps in H1 2026, below H1 2025's own 16.8 bps and nearly a full basis point off H2 2025's peak. Net revenue¹² grew €1,302.9 million, up 19% YoY (21% CC), on processed volume of €803.8 billion, up 24% YoY - both real, strong numbers - but the ratio between them just gave back the entire "reversal" this site spent a year documenting.

What makes this half genuinely hard to read is that the disclosure this site relied on to explain the 2025 reversal is simply gone. Every filing since Adyen's Q3 2024 business update through FY2025 disclosed an "excluding a single large-volume customer" processed-volume figure specifically to explain the gap between reported and underlying volume growth - the same figure this site used across three posts to argue the take-rate improvement was more artifact than pricing power. That disclosure doesn't appear anywhere in the H1 2026 shareholder letter or interim financial statements. There's no way from what's filed to know whether the mega-customer's volume has fully normalized (which would make the take-rate reversal's collapse a genuinely bad sign) or whether Adyen simply stopped breaking it out (see Beyond the Usual below).

Layered on top: two acquisitions - Talon.One (loyalty/incentives software, €750 million) and Orb (usage-based billing infrastructure, $335 million) - both announced this half and closed July 1, 2026, and a leadership transition, with CFO Ethan Tandowsky stepping down at the end of August and SVP of Group Finance Hwa Tsao named incoming interim CFO. None of this shows up in the headline net-revenue-growth number, but all of it is relevant to reading a half where the company's own signature metric moved the wrong way for the first time in a year.

The Prescription

What Adyen should keep pushing: Platforms and Unified Commerce, which grew net revenue 37% and 25% YoY respectively this half against Digital's 13% (see Platforms and Unified Commerce Keep Outrunning Digital below) - the diversification away from a Digital-majority business is real and continuing, with Digital's share of net revenue down to 55% from 56% at FY2025 and 58% two years ago. The Talon.One and Orb acquisitions extend this same logic outward: loyalty and usage-based billing are both adjacent revenue pools Adyen didn't previously touch, bought for a combined ~€1 billion in consideration rather than built from scratch - a real bet that buying distribution into new merchant workflows compounds faster than organic product build-out alone.

What it should stop doing: dropping a disclosure right when the story it was explaining turns unfavorable. The mega-customer volume breakout wasn't a minor footnote - it was the specific number this site (and, implicitly, any analyst tracking Adyen's take rate) used to separate "real pricing power" from "one large customer's volume swinging the blend." Removing that exact disclosure in the same half take rate reverses course reads as worse than simply reporting a weaker number would have, whether or not that's the intent - a company two years into a scrutinized take-rate story shouldn't make the one number that contextualizes it harder to find right when it stops cooperating with the narrative.

Key Financial Metrics

H1 2026 vs. H1 2025 - consolidated. Figures from Adyen's H1 2026 Shareholder Letter and unaudited Interim Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements (unreviewed - Adyen's half-year statements are not subject to auditor review or audit, unlike the FY statements)

FX: EUR 1 = USD 1.1413 (June 30, 2026 close).

Metric	H1 2026 (EUR)	H1 2026 (USD)	H1 2025 (EUR)	YoY
Processed volume	€803.8Bn	~$917.3Bn	€649.0Bn	⚠️ +24%
Net Revenue	€1,302.9M	~$1,486.7M	€1,093.5M	✅ +19.1%
EBITDA	€641.5M	~$732.0M	€543.7M	✅ +18.0%
Operating Income (income before net finance income and income taxes)	€564.3M	~$644.0M	€482.8M	✅ +16.9%
Net Income	€544.1M	~$620.9M	€481.0M	✅ +13.1%
Free Cash Flow (FCF)» (EBITDA − CapEx − lease payments)	€553.4M	~$631.4M	€474.5M	✅ +16.6%
Total Cash and cash equivalents	€12,392.8M	~$14,142.4M	€12,520.7M	⚠️ -1.0%

Balance sheet metric	30 Jun 2026 (EUR)	30 Jun 2026 (USD)	31 Dec 2025 (EUR)	Change
Total Assets	€14,724.1M	~$16,802.9M	€12,256.8M	✅ +20.1%
Total Equity	€5,908.8M	~$6,743.4M	€5,285.4M	✅ +11.8%
Total Liabilities (derived: assets less equity)	€8,815.3M	~$10,059.5M	€6,971.4M	⚠️ +26.4%
Payables to merchants and financial institutions	€8,097.4M	~$9,241.7M	€6,371.8M	⚠️ +27.1%

Net revenue growth of 19.1% reported (21% CC) is roughly in line with the pace this site has tracked since H1 2024, and management's own framing on the call attributed roughly two-thirds of it to expanding relationships with pre-2025 cohorts rather than new-logo growth - a durability signal, not a red flag. EBITDA margin came in at 49%, down a point from H1 2025's 50%, though Adyen says underlying margin (excluding one-time acquisition-related transaction costs) held flat at 50%; the €6 million of acquisition-related costs booked this half (see Beyond the Usual below) accounts for the gap. Net income growth (+13.1%) again trailed EBITDA/operating-income growth (+18.0%/+16.9%) - the same pattern flagged in every Adyen post this site has published - because net finance income grew only 3.3% (€155.7M vs €150.7M) as short-term rates continue compressing the tailwind Adyen's large cash pile used to provide. Total cash fell 1.0% year-over-year despite FCF growing 16.6% - an unusual combination, explained by a €655.2 million cash outflow for Talon.One's prepaid acquisition consideration booked in investing activities ahead of the deal's July 1 close (see Beyond the Usual below); Adyen's own FCF measure, built only from EBITDA/CapEx/lease payments, doesn't capture this M&A-driven outflow at all.

Take rate fell to its lowest level in a year, undoing both halves of 2025's reversal, in the same filing that dropped the one disclosure this site used to explain that reversal in the first place.

Key Operational Metrics

• Take rate: 16.2 bps in H1 2026, down from 17.1 bps in H2 2025 and below H1 2025's own 16.8 bps - the first period-over-period decline this site has recorded since H1 2025 (see The Reversal That Didn't Survive a Third Half above and Beyond the Usual below).
• Net revenue by region: EMEA €722.5M (+14.5% YoY, 55% of net revenue), North America €358.1M (+22.8% YoY, 27%), Asia-Pacific €136.9M (+23.3% YoY, 11%), Latin America €85.3M (+42.9% YoY, 7%) - LatAm remains the fastest-growing region, continuing FY2025's shift.
• Net revenue by commercial pillar: Digital €719.7M (+12.6% YoY, 55%), Unified Commerce €417.7M (+25.0% YoY, 32%), Platforms €165.5M (+37.3% YoY, 13%) - see Platforms and Unified Commerce Keep Outrunning Digital below.
• FTE^» headcount: 5,020 at June 30, 2026, up from 4,771 at December 31, 2025 (249 net new joiners this half) - against a full-year 2026 target of 550-650 net new hires, meaning 301-401 more are still to come in H2, the same second-half hiring acceleration flagged at FY2025 and the half before that.
• Shares outstanding: 31,566,677 at June 30, 2026, up from 31,536,692 at December 31, 2025 - 29,985 net new shares from option exercises and employee vesting, before any shares issued for the Talon.One/Orb consideration (both deals closed after period-end).
• 2026 guidance (raised nominally, unchanged organically): full-year net revenue growth of 21-23% CC, up from the 20-22% guided at FY2025 - but management was explicit on the call that the entire increase is the ~1-point contribution from Talon.One and Orb; "our growth outlook for the underlying organic business is unchanged." EBITDA margin is now guided to land ~1 point below 2025 (versus "broadly in line" previously), again attributed to the acquisitions. CapEx guidance was raised from up to 5% to ~7% of net revenue, as Adyen pulls 2027 data-center investment into H2 2026 to secure capacity (see Beyond the Usual below).
• Not available this filing: full-stack acquiring share of processed volume (last disclosed at 83% in FY2024) and customer Net Promoter Score (last disclosed at 66 in FY2024) remain absent for a third consecutive filing. The "excluding one large-volume customer" processed-volume breakout, disclosed in every filing since Q3 2024, is also absent for the first time (see Beyond the Usual below) - this is the more consequential omission this half.

Platforms and Unified Commerce Keep Outrunning Digital

Adyen reports net revenue for three commercial pillars - Digital, Unified Commerce, and Platforms - at the half-year mark.

Digital (still the largest pillar at 55% of net revenue, down from 56% at FY2025): net revenue grew 12.6% YoY (15% CC) to €719.7 million, again the slowest-growing of the three pillars, on processed volume of €427.9 billion, up 17% YoY. The letter attributes growth to "wallet-share gains" from Adyen's largest content-and-subscription customers, without the granular color on U.S. tariffs or specific verticals that accompanied prior filings - a thinner explanation for the pillar carrying the most revenue.

Unified Commerce (32% of net revenue): net revenue grew 25.0% YoY (27% CC) to €417.7 million, with processed volume up 27% to €240.9 billion, driven by continued wallet-share gains in global retail and strength in food & beverage. Adyen now serves 486 customers processing across channels at scale (defined as at least €10 million on both POS and e-commerce, over €50 million total in the last 12 months) - a metric introduced this filing that isn't directly comparable to the "591 Unified Commerce customers" figure FY2025 disclosed, since the two use different qualifying thresholds.

Platforms (13% of net revenue, still smallest but fastest-growing for a second straight period): net revenue grew 37.3% YoY (40% CC) to €165.5 million, with processed volume up 42% to €135.0 billion. Adyen now powers 37 platform customers processing over €1 billion annually, up from 32 a year ago, and active business customers reached 293,000, up 51% YoY - both continuations of the broadening-beyond-eBay trend flagged at FY2025.

Which pillar is carrying the business: unchanged from the last two filings - Platforms and Unified Commerce are compounding at 25-37% while Digital, still the majority of revenue, grows barely a third as fast. The gap is narrowing gradually (Digital's revenue share has fallen from 58% two years ago to 55% now), but this remains, on every metric this site tracks, a Digital-majority business whose growth rate is set by its two smaller pillars.

Management's Framing: A Strategy Pitch That Never Mentions Take Rate

Co-CEO Ingo Uytdehaage's prepared remarks framed H1 2026 around Adyen becoming "the complete financial operating system for modern commerce" - payments plus loyalty (via Talon.One), usage-based billing (via Orb), an AI-agent commerce product ("Adyen Agentic"), and a newly launched "Intelligent Money Movement" treasury product. Incoming interim CFO Hwa Tsao's section covered the growth "building blocks" (existing-customer expansion, cohort ramping, new logos, financial products), headcount, EBITDA, and CapEx in detail. Neither speaker mentioned take rate, processed volume ex-customer, or the mega-customer dynamic at all - a genuine change from prior calls, where management addressed the metric directly even when the explanation was unflattering. Cross-referencing Beyond the Usual below: the same disclosure gap shows up in the prepared remarks as in the filed statements, which at minimum confirms this wasn't an editing oversight in the shareholder letter alone.

The CapEx guidance change got the most direct color on the call: Tsao said Adyen is "proactively pulling investment from 2027 into H2 2026, to secure compute and storage availability, and lock in price amid an unprecedented demand environment" - language that reads as data-center capacity risk (the same infrastructure crunch showing up across the software/cloud sector) rather than a discretionary growth investment, and one worth watching for whether it recurs into 2027 rather than being a one-time pull-forward as described.

Beyond the Usual

The mega-customer disclosure vanished the same half take rate turned down

Every Adyen filing this site has reviewed since the company's Q3 2024 business update has disclosed an "excluding a single large-volume customer" processed-volume growth figure, specifically to explain gaps between reported and underlying volume growth - and this site has used that same figure across three posts (H1 2025, FY2025) to argue that 2025's take-rate "reversal" was more artifact of one customer's shrinking volume than genuine pricing power. That disclosure is entirely absent from the H1 2026 shareholder letter, interim financial statements, and prepared remarks. This is the exact half take rate reversed course and fell below H1 2025's own level - which means a reader can no longer check whether the mega-customer's volume decline resumed (which would make this half's take-rate drop more concerning, not less) or whether it simply normalized and the disclosure was retired for that reason. Both are plausible; neither can be confirmed from what's filed. Worth watching whether the disclosure reappears at H2 2026, and if it doesn't, treating its permanent absence as itself informative about how comfortable Adyen is with what it would show.

A new CFO, mid-transition, six months after net revenue guidance first disappointed

This filing's prepared remarks are delivered by "Hwa Tsao, Incoming Interim CFO" rather than Ethan Tandowsky, who signed the interim financial statements as CFO on August 13, 2026 but is stepping down at the end of that month to pursue an opportunity outside fintech; Tsao, who joined Adyen in November 2025 as SVP of Group Finance, becomes interim CFO effective September 1, 2026 while a permanent search continues. This is the first CFO transition this site has tracked across Adyen's coverage, and it lands directly after the February 2026 FY2025 report whose below-consensus guidance triggered a sharp share-price decline (see Target Valuation Range below) - a genuine coincidence is possible, but a CFO departure landing in the same half as a stock down over 40% from its December 2025 close, two large acquisitions, and a vanished key disclosure is enough concurrent change that a reader should watch H2 2026's filing closely for continuity in how numbers are presented, not just what they say.

Bad debts and provisions jumped six-fold on causes described only in general terms

Bad debts and provisions within other operating expenses rose to €16.1 million in H1 2026 from €2.6 million in H1 2025 - a 6.1x increase, on a total other-operating-expenses line that grew only 31.5% overall. The filing attributes the jump to "two isolated, non-recurring events: a single counterparty impairment event and a comprehensive administrative clean up of legacy, unclosed merchant accounts," without naming the counterparty, its size, or what "unclosed merchant accounts" being cleaned up actually means operationally. At €16.1 million against €1.3 billion of net revenue this half, the absolute amount isn't large enough to move any headline number - but an unnamed "counterparty impairment event" is exactly the kind of phrase that's worth a specific follow-up question if it recurs, rather than one this site can independently verify from what's disclosed.

Adyen closed two acquisitions the day after this half ended: Talon.One, a German loyalty and incentives software provider, for a preliminary €750 million consideration (€69.8 million paid in Adyen shares), and Orb, a US enterprise billing and usage-based pricing platform, for a preliminary $335 million (USD 33.2 million in shares). Both deals were announced and had their prepaid consideration transferred during H1 2026 - the €655.2 million Talon.One prepayment sits on the balance sheet as "Prepaid acquisition consideration" - but formal closing, and consolidation into Adyen's results, only occurred July 1, 2026, so none of this half's revenue or profit reflects either acquired business. Combined, management expects the two to add roughly 1 percentage point to 2026 net revenue growth against an estimated 1 point of EBITDA margin dilution, inclusive of the €6 million of one-time transaction costs already booked this half. Purchase price allocation - and therefore the eventual goodwill figure - hadn't started as of this filing, since the measurement period only began on the July 1 closing date.

The Dutch statutory legal reserve - which captures unrealized currency translation on Adyen's foreign operations and turned negative for the first time at FY2025, per that post's finding - narrowed further this half, from €(57.3) million at December 31, 2025 to €(9.9) million at June 30, 2026, as the euro's translation effect against Adyen's foreign-currency operations partially reversed. The reserve remains non-distributable and restricted regardless of sign, and Adyen still pays no dividends, so this has no cash consequence - but it's the clearest sign yet that FY2025's negative print was a currency-cycle event rather than a persistent trend.

CapEx guidance for full-year 2026 was raised from "up to 5%" of net revenue to "approximately 7%," with management framing the increase as pulling 2027 data-center investment forward into H2 2026 "to secure compute and storage availability, and lock in price amid an unprecedented demand environment" (see Management's Framing above). H1 2026 CapEx itself was €64.1 million (5% of net revenue, in line with prior periods) - the entire guided increase is expected in the second half. Framed as a temporary pull-forward rather than a structural cost increase, but data-center capacity tightness is a sector-wide dynamic in 2026, not something unique to Adyen's own execution, and worth checking against 2027's actual CapEx once it's reported.

Stock Price: A 40% Decline Since December, With No Split

Adyen shares closed H1 2025 at €1,558.40 (June 30, 2025) and reached this window's high of €1,741.20 on February 28, 2025 before beginning a long decline. FY2025 closed at €1,375.00 on December 31, 2025 (down 4.3% for the year, as flagged at the time) - but that decline accelerated sharply into 2026: €1,253.40 in January, then €994.80 in February (a 20.6% one-month drop, coinciding with the FY2025 results and 2026 guidance that came in below analyst expectations), a further slide to €850.60 in March (a fresh multi-year low), a partial recovery to €958.50 in April, a slight pullback to €939.30 in May, and a close of €820.40 on June 30, 2026 - down 40.3% from the December 31, 2025 close, and down 52.9% from the February 2025 high inside this post's two-year window. No stock split occurred during this window or since; Adyen's only split (2-for-1) remains August 2021, so every price above is an actual nominal close, not split-adjusted.

The proximate trigger, per contemporaneous coverage, was the FY2025 report itself: Adyen's initial 2026 net revenue growth guidance (20-22% CC) landed below sell-side expectations closer to the mid-20s, and H2 2025 processed volume came in below at least one analyst's estimate - a genuine guidance miss, not a headline-numbers miss, since FY2025's own results (18.4% net revenue growth, 53% EBITDA margin) were themselves records. The decline continuing through March, well past the initial earnings reaction, suggests the market kept re-rating the stock on the guidance itself (or on a broader European growth-stock de-rating) rather than reacting to any single new data point. This half's own results - and its own falling take rate - land into a stock already down more than half from its cycle high, which changes how the valuation math below should be read: today's multiple is no longer "expensive relative to history," it's "compressed relative to history," and the question is whether that compression is now roughly right-sized or has further to go.

Target Valuation Range

~€820 actual vs. ~€902 base-case implied fair value (~23.1x TTM P/E, ~16.6x TTM EV/EBITDA today). Bottom line: the stock's post-guidance-cut decline has brought it close to - modestly below - what this site's base-case multiple scenario implies, a large change from FY2025's read of "undervalued on every trailing multiple." This isn't obviously cheap or expensive anymore; it's roughly fairly valued if 2026 plays out as guided, with real downside if the take-rate decline turns out to be more than a one-half blip and real upside if H2 2026 brings back evidence (a mega-customer disclosure, a stabilized take rate) that the market's re-rating overshot.

Market cap → enterprise value	H1 2026 (period-end)
Share price (period-end, Jun 30, 2026 close)	€820.40
Shares outstanding	31,566,677
Market capitalization	~€25.9 billion (~$29.6 billion)
Plus: total liabilities	€8,815.3 million
Less: cash and equivalents	€12,392.8 million
Enterprise value	~€22.3 billion (~$25.5 billion)

Peer-multiple sanity check	FY2025 (full-year)	H1 2026 (TTM)	Change
EPS (diluted, TTM)	€33.62 (full-year)	€35.58 (TTM)	✅ up
P/E (diluted)	~40.9x	~23.1x	⚠️ down (re-rating)
Book value per share	€167.60	€187.18	✅ up
P/B	~8.2x	~4.4x	⚠️ down (re-rating)
EV/Revenue (TTM)	~13.8x	~8.7x	⚠️ down (re-rating)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~26.1x	~16.6x	⚠️ down (re-rating)

TTM figures sum H2 2025 (this site's derived FY2025-minus-H1-2025 residual) and H1 2026's actual reported half. No full multi-year DCF is built here, consistent with every prior Adyen post on this site - the usable filing history (H1 2018, FY2018, H1 2024, FY2024, H1 2025, FY2025, now H1 2026) still has a large early gap that isn't a reliable base for a continuous multi-year model, though five consecutive half-year filings now overlap cleanly. No peer-multiple comparison against another company is included, since no other global enterprise payments processor is currently covered on this site with a verified downloaded filing.

Reverse-DCF logic (directional, multiple-based - not a formal discounted cash flow): the three scenarios below apply an assumed EV/EBITDA multiple to a projected FY2026 EBITDA, then back out an implied share price using period-end liabilities and cash held constant as a simplifying assumption (both will move with the Talon.One/Orb consolidation from Q3 2026 onward, which isn't modeled here).

Scenario	Key assumption	Implied FY2026E EBITDA	Applied EV/EBITDA	Implied share price
Bear	Reported growth slips to ~18% on FX, margin dilution exceeds guidance (~51%), multiple compresses further to reflect continued de-rating risk	~€1,423M	14.0x	~€744
Base	Growth and margin land inside guidance (21-23% CC, ~52% margin), multiple holds near today's ~16.6x TTM level	~€1,500M	16.6x	~€902
Bull	Growth lands at the top of guidance, underlying margin holds flat at 53% despite acquisition dilution, multiple partially re-rates back toward ~20x as the take-rate/CFO/mega-customer uncertainties resolve favorably	~€1,541M	20.0x	~€1,090
Current (period-end close)	—	—	—	€820.40

The current price sits below the base case and well above the bear case - roughly where a market pricing in genuine but not maximal uncertainty about H2 2026 would put it. If the mega-customer disclosure returns at H2 2026 showing the normalization story intact, or if take rate simply resumes rising, the base-case gap alone (~€82, or ~10%) is the more likely near-term move; a repeat of this half's take-rate decline without the context to explain it would argue for the bear case instead.

• Bear case: FY2026 net revenue growth undershoots guidance on FX or organic softness, EBITDA margin dilution from the acquisitions exceeds the guided 1 point, and take rate continues falling without the mega-customer context ever returning - the multiple has room to fall further from an already-compressed level.
• Base case: FY2026 lands inside guidance on both growth and margin, the mega-customer disclosure either returns showing normalization or its absence proves genuinely uninformative, and the multiple stabilizes near today's level as a real, durable re-rating from 2024-2025's richer pricing.
• Bull case: H2 2026 take rate recovers toward H2 2025's 17.1 bps, the CFO transition resolves smoothly with a permanent hire, and Talon.One/Orb integration shows early revenue traction - enough for the market to treat this year's de-rating as overdone.

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