Adyen Pledges to Listen to Investors Following 44% Stock Price Drop

Adyen is reportedly holding an investor day in November following a stock selloff.

The Dutch payments processing company has been meeting with investors in a roadshow, Chief Financial Officer Ethan Tandowsky told Bloomberg in an interview published Tuesday (Sept. 5).

“We find the dialog that we had with them in that setting really important, and we want to be able to continue that,” he said, per the report.

Adyen is used by several well-known companies — including Microsoft, Instacart and Subway — as an all-in-one payments processor that delivers payments over online, mobile and in-store channels, with its infrastructure connecting to Visa, Mastercard and other payment methods.

The company had been popular among investors, with its revenue growing by at least 26% every six months since going public in 2018, according to the Bloomberg report.

Then came its half-year earnings report last month, in which Adyen said hiring costs and slower growth in the United States — where it competes with companies like PayPal — had caused it to miss its internal targets.

“In some areas, the business grew at a lower rate than anticipated,” the company said in a letter to shareholders. “This was the case for our North American net revenue … an increasingly important contributor in recent years.”

The news caused the company’s share price to fall 44%, with its stock losing $23 billion in market value.

As for the stepped-up pace of hiring, Adyen onboarded 400 workers in the first six months of last year, half of them for tech roles.

At the time, Chief Financial Officer Ingo Uytdehaage — now the company’s co-CEO — said these hirings were an investment in the company’s future.

In the wake of last month’s earnings report, Uytdehaage said the company had “lost some trust” and promised to listen to investors “very carefully,” per the Bloomberg report.

Jefferies analyst Hannes Leitner said in the report that the investor day decision is a positive development, adding that his bank wants to understand Adyen’s perspective on the payments market and its competitive position.

“I do think it signals the market [that] Adyen management is actively working on answering investors’ concern around long-term growth opportunities for the company,” Leitner said in the report.