Earnings Labs

Global Payments Inc. (GPN)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 18, 2026

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Global Payments Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, today's conference will be recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Nate Rozof. Please go ahead.

Nathan Rozof

Analyst

Good morning. Welcome to Global Payments Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Joining us today is our CEO, Cameron Bready; CFO, Josh Whipple; and COO, Bob Cortopassi. Some of the comments made during today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied and we caution you not to place undue reliance upon them. They speak only as of the date of this call, and we take no obligation to update them. In addition, we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures. For a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to our most comparable GAAP measure, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8-K filed this morning and the supplemental material available on our Investor Relations website. Finally, I'd like to note that we developed a slide presentation to accompany our prepared remarks, which is also available on our Investor Relations website. and Cameron's comments will begin on Slide 4. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Cameron Bready. Cameron?

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Baird

Thanks, Nate. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. As I'm sure you've seen by now, we successfully completed the acquisition of Worldpay in January, alongside the simultaneous divestiture of our Issuer Solutions business, marking an important milestone in the strategic transformation we've been executing over the past 18 months. I want to take a moment to extend my sincere appreciation and best wishes to our Issuer Solutions colleagues and to warmly welcome the talented team members of the Worldpay to the Global Payments family. Their expertise, passion and commitment have strengthened our organization from day 1. Our combination with Worldpay is not about creating a larger version of our 2 companies. It is about creating a better Global Payments, one with the enhanced scale capabilities and the focus necessary to compete and win as the worldwide partner of choice for commerce solutions. And we have greater conviction today than ever that this transaction will allow us to do just that. We have a lot to cover today, so let me briefly outline the agenda. I will begin with Global Payments standalone results for the fourth quarter and full year. Next, I will introduce the new Global Payments and highlight the key strategic initiatives we are focused on executing in 2026. I will then turn the call over to Josh to share more detail on our financial performance and outlook. We are very pleased with how we ended the year, delivering exactly as expected and fully aligned with the outlook we provided last February. For the fourth quarter, we reported 6% constant currency adjusted net revenue growth, excluding dispositions, 80 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion and 12% adjusted EPS growth. Our Merchant Solutions business maintained strong momentum with adjusted net revenue growth accelerating to slightly above…

Joshua Whipple

Analyst · Baird

Thanks, Cameron. We're pleased with our financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year, which were consistent with our expectations. I'm particularly proud that we delivered these results while meaningfully progressing our transformation agenda, preparing the separation of our Issuer Solutions business and navigating a complex regulatory approval process and conducting extensive planning for the integration of Worldpay. As a reminder, the following figures reflect the last quarter of results for stand-alone Global Payments, which includes Issuer Solutions, and excludes Worldpay for the full quarter. Starting with the full year 2025, we delivered adjusted net revenue of $9.32 billion, an increase of 6% from the prior year on a constant currency basis, excluding dispositions. Adjusted operating margin for the full year improved 100 basis points to 44.2% or 80 basis points, excluding dispositions. The net result was adjusted earnings per share of $12.22, an increase of 12% compared to the full year 2024 or 11% on a constant currency basis. The top line accelerated in the second half as we expected. And in the fourth quarter, we delivered adjusted net revenue of $2.32 billion, an increase of 6% from the prior year period on a constant currency basis excluding dispositions. Adjusted operating margin for the fourth quarter increased 80 basis points to 44.7%. The net result was adjusted earnings per share of $3.18 and an increase of 12% compared to the prior year period or 11% on a constant currency basis. Our Merchant Solutions segment achieved adjusted net revenue of $1.78 billion for the fourth quarter reflecting growth of slightly over 6% on a constant currency basis, excluding dispositions, consistent with our expectation for modest acceleration from the third to the fourth quarter. We saw continued momentum across our POS and software business, which achieved high single-digit…

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Baird

Thanks, Josh. I could not be more proud of our team's execution this year and excited for what we can accomplish going forward as we combine with Worldpay. The Worldpay acquisition represents a pivotal moment in our evolution. And as we integrate our businesses, our focus remains on driving consistent durable growth through an unwavering commitment to our clients and the strengths that are distinctive to Global Payments. Our new pure-play orientation allows us to move faster, deploy resources more effectively and serve clients in a truly client-centric way. And we will differentiate through feature-rich products, white glove service and support experiences that consistently exceed expectations. With unmatched payments experience in deep fluency across nearly every vertical and client type, we are uniquely positioned to deliver tailored technology solutions, not one size fits all approaches. And now with our expanded geographic footprint, we have an unparalleled global reach. We can ignite growth for our customers and partners by helping them expand into new markets around the world, supported by local expertise and deep relationships, from best-in-class enterprise payment tools to feature-rich platforms like Genius, Global Payments is at the forefront of modern commerce technology. And with $1 billion in annual investment, we are one of the few companies in the industry capable of innovating at this scale, anticipating our customer needs and delivering solutions before they even ask. Finally, we remain laser-focused on delivering shareholder value and maintaining a disciplined capital return framework. We are a proven compounded with substantial free cash flow generation. Based on our current share price, our capital return plans enable us to repurchase the equivalent of roughly 30% of our market cap over this year and next. Operator, would you please open the line for questions.

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from Dave Koning at Baird.

David Koning

Analyst · Baird

Great job. I guess, first of all, 5%-ish organic constant currency growth, that's great to hear. What's the split maybe between enterprise and SMB and then between Worldpay and Global? Or are all parts of the business growing about mid-single digits?

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Baird

Thanks for the comment. I'll ask Josh maybe to kind of walk through the guide and then give you a little more color on the expectation for 2026.

Joshua Whipple

Analyst · Baird

Yes. So thanks, Dave. It's Josh. Look, as I said in my prepared remarks, our guide for the full year is at that 5% constant currency ex disposition. And our merchant business, we exited the year a little bit over 6% organically. And Worldpay exited the year approximately 4%, which kind of gets you to the 5% for the full year. As it relates to kind of the first half versus second half, we've adjusted -- we've closed the transaction. We felt that it was prudent to guide the first half to modestly below 5% as we kind of line and bring those businesses together. And as we move through the year, we expect to see modest acceleration on the top line with top line growth in the back half of the year over 5%, and this is largely driven from the increasing benefits from our sales expansion as well as improving our sales effectiveness from the transformation and then the continued ramp of Genius. As it relates to the overall splits, as you think about the pro forma splits of the business, SMB is approximately 50% of the revenue composition and then as you think about platforms and enterprise and e-commerce, that represents the other 50% of the pro forma and they're probably equally split. So that's about 25% for each of those 2 businesses.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Baird

And Dave, it's Cameron. Maybe I'll just add a couple of comments, if you don't mind. I think first and foremost, I think the outlook that we gave for the combination of the 2 businesses back in April remains our outlook over the medium term. in terms of where we see revenue growth for the business. I think as we thought about 2026, with the businesses coming together very early in the year, we wanted to take a fairly prudent approach to the outlook for 2026. So these are 2 large businesses. We're very focused, particularly in the first half of the year to make sure that we get off on the right foot together. We're focused on our integration activities and particularly around realigning our go-to-market channels, as I described in my comments around enterprise platform and integrated and SMB. And from our vantage point, we think this is the right approach to take for the guide for 2026. So I think it's worth noting that we closed the business about 6 months earlier than we originally anticipated. And obviously, that factors into I think, our outlook as well. But we're exiting the year, as Josh highlighted, above 5%. I think that gives us good momentum to kind of accelerate growth heading into 2027. And obviously, I think that puts us on track to get to kind of the medium-term outlook that we had for the combined business that we shared when we originally announced the transaction.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Darrin Peller at Wolfe.

Darrin Peller

Analyst · Wolfe

A nice job and congrats on closing the deal early. Could we touch on the, a, the trajectory of the synergies you're expecting as the year progresses? And then maybe a little bit more color on what you're incorporating into the guide around synergies again, just to remind us where you stand on that. And then I guess just -- I'll put it all together as one question. Just really understanding the cross-sell into the SMB business at Worldpay, utilizing what you're seeing with the success of Genius. I know that's been a business that has some real potential and so I'm curious to see what you're seeing given the -- it's been a couple of months since you closed and working towards the close for some time.

Joshua Whipple

Analyst · Wolfe

Darrin, it's Josh. I'll take the first part of the question on cost synergies. So as we discuss probably, we expect to realize $600 million in cost synergies over the course of the next 3 years as we integrate these 2 businesses. And look, in year 1, we expect to realize or 2026, we expect to realize $70 million to $80 million of cost synergies. And look, we spent a lot of time planning, obviously, over the last 6 months as we approach the closing date. We feel very, very good about that number. We have very, very detailed plans in place, and we've already started executing on that. So we expect to see kind of that $70 million to $80 million in cost synergies in 2026.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Wolfe

Yes. And Darrin, it's Cameron. I'll take the second part of the question. Look, I think we have a lot of optimism around what we can do as a combined company, particularly in the SMB channel, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, particularly around the ability to cross-sell our capabilities into the existing Worldpay base and also leveraging the Worldpay distribution platforms to get better penetration and saturation of our solutions into the market. As I noted, we've already enabled Worldpay to sell Genius through their channels, their direct channels here in the U.S. market, and they've already sold a number of solutions into the marketplace and have a nice growing pipeline of opportunities as well. We're also going to introduce Genius into Worldpay's FI platforms here in the U.S., as well as our wholesale channels as we look to expand the distribution through which we push Genius moving forward in time. So I see lots of opportunities to leverage kind of the existing Worldpay distribution channels. here in the U.S. market to bring more of our products, Genius and our other commerce enablement solutions to the market, as I said before, to get better adoption of those capabilities more broadly. And then, of course, in the U.K., where Worldpay has a large presence today. We also plan to bring Genius to the U.K. distribution platforms for Worldpay in the SMB channel and obviously look to cross-sell Genius into the existing sort of back book of customer base that exists with the Worldpay business in the U.K. as well. So the combination of our 2 SMB businesses gives us much better and diversification of distribution, more channels by which to bring Genius to market. And obviously, an embedded back book of customers a significantly large probably 5-plus million merchant base of customers. that have the potential to cross-sell commerce-enabled solutions and Genius into as we move forward.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Dan Dolev at Mizuho.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Mizuho

Well, great results here. Congrats. I love seeing the stock going up, well deserved. Cameron, question for you. The stock is clearly very undervalued in our view, and you're firing in all cylinders, you're buying back a lot of stock, like very good. Maybe can you discuss what are the puts and takes of staying public here versus alternatives? Because I think the message to the market is that there's going to be a lot of really good things down the road, staying public. So maybe some views here would be great.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Mizuho

Yes. First of all, Dan, thanks for the comments. And obviously, we agree with your conclusion as it relates to the valuation I think, look, first and foremost, we're focused on integrating Worldpay and unlocking the promise that we see in the combination, which we think obviously is immense. And we're also very focused on executing against our capital return plans. That said, as we continue to do that, we continue to assess all options to maximize value for shareholders. We think that's our responsibility and it's something that we take very, very seriously. What I would tell you is, look, if we get to a point after a period of time of integrating the businesses, producing results, returning capital, if the public markets continue to not fairly value the business, I think we owe it to ourselves to look at all alternatives and evaluate all alternatives. And what I would say around that is there's an enormous amount of private capital that's obviously on the sidelines, and then you're seeing bigger and bigger deals getting done. So it feels like a more feasible option now than it ever has been. But I think in the short term, we're focusing on delivering on the commitments we've made, executing well on the integration, and we'll continue our capital return plans, and we'll see where we are as time progresses.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ramsey El-Assal at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Ramsey El-Assal

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald

I had a question about the expansion of your sales force and your plans to hire another 300 sales heads this year. What parts of the business will these sales additions be stacked against? Is it mostly SMB and Genius? Is it Worldpay offerings, cross-selling? I guess, where are you going to deploy these folks to make the biggest difference?

Robert Cortopassi

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald

Ramsey, it's Bob. Thanks for the question. Most of the expansion of the sales force heretofore has been focused on North America and specifically our sales of the combined Genius payments and value-added service offerings. I think that's the segment of the market that we still see opportunity to add incremental sales resources, particularly as you go up market from the very smallest of SMB into the upper end of SMB and beginning into the mid-market space. We continue to see that largely is driven by relationship sales activities. There's certainly merchants who are interested in self-service options, and we provide a full spectrum of digital sales and customer acquisition channels and tool sets to serve them. But the more complex sales do, in our view, require a the engagement of a relationship, consultative sort of sale. And so we're going to continue to stack resources against that as we see opportunities to expand and accelerate Genius adoption.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Adam Frisch at Evercore.

Adam Frisch

Analyst · Evercore

On Genius, our check suggests that the SMB space is obviously still very competitive, but none of the major players are pricing irrationally in the market that would threaten current business models. My question is, would you agree with that? And then a quick tangential question. There's been some speculation around Toast renewing with you. Our checks pointed to a competitive deal, but you would retain them if you're able to provide any update on that, that would be great.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Evercore

Yes. Maybe I'll start. Thanks for the question, and I'll ask Bob to add a little bit more color as well. I'd say, look, from our vantage point, the market -- the competitive market around point of sale does remain very competitive. Obviously, there's a number of strong players in the space. We believe that we are one of them, and we are building momentum around everything that we're doing with Genius, and we feel very good about where we are I think, in the progress that we have made. I think as we look across the things that we're doing, we're growing well in the areas that we've already launched our capabilities. And I think that's evidenced by the commentary that Josh provided in his prepared remarks this morning in his script, we're also expanding into new markets and new geographies, new subverticals, new form factors, and as well new distribution channels, as I commented on earlier, all of that gives us, I think, enormous confidence we're going to continue to build momentum around Genius and continue to see very positive results and gain more share with Genius in the marketplace. I would say as it relates to the pricing environment, it remains fairly rational to your point. I don't think we're seeing a lot of irrational behavior from a pricing standpoint. It is very competitive. I think one of the things that we feel very good about is given the enormous scale that we bring to the business, particularly from a payment standpoint, we can be as price as competitive as anybody. But our goal remains to be with our distribution diversity the capabilities and feature richness of our solutions and obviously, the distinctive service experience that we think we can deliver to customers. As it relates to the second part of your question before I turn it over to Bob, maybe to provide a little more color around the POS market. We have renewed with Toast on a multiyear deal. So that is done, and we're proud to continue to support them from a payments perspective going forward.

Robert Cortopassi

Analyst · Evercore

Yes. Adam, I think Cameron well covered the competitive environment. It still is a very competitive marketplace. We continue to feel very strong about our opportunities to win there. And I think we are demonstrating that with the share gains that we're executing on sequentially quarter-over-quarter since the Genius launch last year. The one data point I might offer around this is that particularly in our POS sales team, the signed annual revenue per deal is up nearly 50% on a year-over-year basis. So I think that speaks not only to sort of the constructive pricing environment that continues to represent value as we go to market, but also the value of the combined solution that we're driving today with Genius attaching sales, attaching value added services and delivering that to merchants of compelling value size and opportunity for the business.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Evercore

And if I could add maybe one more anecdotal data point. As we talk about sort of 200 sales reps that we've hired recently as we're building towards the 500 million, a number of them are actually point-of-sale sellers that have come from competitors in the marketplace. So I think that's a good sort of data point as it relates to their confidence in the product and capability that we're bringing to market and their ability to be effective sellers inside of our environment, given the tools that we've provided. Obviously, the lead flow that we're able to bring to them and, of course, the product and capability we're bringing to market. So we're proud that we've been able to do that and feel good about, again, how the product is positioned as a competitive matter going forward.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Tien-Tsin Huang at JPMorgan.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analyst · JPMorgan

Thanks for going over so much stuff here. It's great to consume. Just thinking about the revenue growth algorithm, maybe in a little bit more detail. Would you encourage us to focus on performance across the enterprise, integrated and the SMB channel? Is that the best place for us to study the business? And any big picture thoughts on growth contribution from, say, units, volume, net sales, pricing, that kind of thing or even Worldpay versus Global Payments. I know it's a lot to cover there. But just trying to get a better sense of the growth algorithm.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · JPMorgan

Yes. Look, Tien-Tsin, it's a great question. I appreciate you asking some of this, we're going to be able to dig into a little bit deeper as we get to Q1. We get the channels completely realigned. We only closed a month ago, and we're obviously working through getting all the channels kind of aligned on a historical basis and a go-forward basis, et cetera. So we'll be able to give you a little more visibility around the business. We prepare for the Q1 call, particularly across the enterprise integrated platform and SMB channels. So more to come on that front. I would just say around the growth algorithm more broadly. Obviously, given the significant investments we've been making in commercial activities. Obviously, we expect that to be the primary driver of growth for the business going forward. We'll always continue to make sure that we're optimizing price and yield in our portfolio given the level of value in service and capability that we bring to the market. But we think we've done a pretty good job over the course of time of optimizing our pricing in the business. So our goal is really to lean more into the commercial capabilities of the business, given all of the investments that we've made through transformation, obviously, the increased capabilities that we have through the Worldpay acquisition to such that commercial activities and new revenue growth generated from our go-to-market activities will be the primary driver of growth in the business, coupled with the core same-store sales and just organic growth in the customer base that we have. So that's a good way to think to think about the growth algorithm more broadly kind of across the business. And as I said before, we'll give you a little more color around the individual channels as we get to the first quarter and leading up to our Q1 call.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Andrew Schmidt at KeyBanc.

Andrew Schmidt

Analyst · KeyBanc

Cameron, Josh, Bob. Great to see the state results here. Congrats I want to just ask about the Worldpay growth expertise for this year into next. Maybe just talk about the sort of e-commerce SMB integrated payments breakout. So where the largest opportunities are there. It sounds like there might be a little bit of step up into next year to get to that sort of intermediate term growth rate. Obviously, a lot of opportunities with these organizations coming together, but a finer point there on the subsegments. And I understand this will be consolidated at some point. But any detail there, that would be helpful.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · KeyBanc

I'll try to give you a little bit of color and as I said before, I think we'll be able to give more detail around the individual channels as we get to the first quarter. As we -- at the Worldpay business more broadly, we talked about sort of their normalized growth in 2025, which was essentially on top of what we underwrote as part of the transaction. So we feel good about the trajectory of growth in the business. As we talked about before, they're on their own sort of transformation journey, accelerating growth across the business, and we're continuing to see good progress within the world-based and stand-alone business. And now as we bring our 2 companies together, our goal is to continue that trajectory for the combined business to get to the medium-term outlook that I shared earlier, which remains our medium-term outlook for the business. Look at the -- in the Worldpay business, their enterprise e-comm capabilities are best-in-class and they're highly competitive, and we're seeing very attractive growth rates there in terms of both volume and revenue. They're more legacy, card-present, enterprise business. That's more of a GDP grower. So you blend those 2 together. And you have a healthy growing business. It's a good mix of very strong e-com growth and slightly lower kind of enterprise, more card-present oriented growth. The platform business, again, is a bit of a tale of two stories. The Payrix and managed PayFac solutions is growing very, very nicely. Obviously, as we've talked about in the past, Worldpay has a book of integrated referral partners that probably hasn't been nourished as well over time. So the overall channel is growing kind of around the average rate for the combined business that we've outlined for 2026, but it's a little…

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Dominic Ball at Redburn.

Dominic Ball

Analyst · Redburn

Super interesting data point on the platform business there with Toast. Moving to the back book in Genius, you're being quite clear over the last sort of 9 to 12 months, you wish to sort of migrate merchants on to Genius from the back book. Initially, this was sought to be led from merchants or more merchant led. There's been a few instances we've seen here and there like mobile bites, where it seems to be more of a proactive migration. So can you clarify sort of the philosophy around from book versus back book migration how proactive do you intend to be? And then kind of a time line on this as well?

Robert Cortopassi

Analyst · Redburn

Dominic, it's Bob. I think our strategy around it hasn't fundamentally changed. What you might be seeing are some differences in market dynamics amongst some of the legacy portfolio. So our focus is still on front book opportunities primarily and serving the back book migrations as and when clients are ready to make that move. We've instantiated no sort of formal deprecation program or wind-down strategy for the legacy platforms that are forcing people to make a choice to move. So what both our direct sellers as well as our dealer network are doing are responding to the demands of those clients. In some cases, people known about Genius for many months now. We've been talking about its launch since early last year. Momentum has been building and excitement has been building around the platform. And so we do have pent-up demand in the back book and both our direct sellers as well as our dealer network, as I mentioned, are serving those as and when they're ready to migrate. The great news, as we mentioned is that while Genius is an entirely new platform, it's built on top of technologies that we've been developing over the past 3 to 5 years or so. So it provides for a fairly streamlined conversion and upgrade experience for those clients looking to upgrade both software and hardware services to the newer Genius stack. So just to sum it all up, we're responding to our customers. We're there and ready when they're ready, but we're not putting again to anybody's head to force a migration. And we're still very excited about the front book opportunities that we continue to convert at a pretty steady and accelerating clip.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Redburn

Yes. And I would only add to that, and I think that's exactly my view as well. The only thing I would share is as we think about the back book, if a client wants to make a move or is looking to make a move more broadly, our goal is to make that as seamless and easy as possible. So if a client is willing to go through the process of making a change, it should be easier to move to Genius than any other third-party solution in the marketplace. And certainly, our goal is to make it as easy as possible creating as little disruption for that client as possible. So recognizing that someone making a decision to upgrade platforms are going to have to make some change. Our goal is to be able to minimize change and obviously, continue to build on the goodwill we have with that client and make it easy for them to move to Genius. So that's really our focus versus to Bob's point, a forced migration that puts clients in a position of having to make a change in some cases against their will.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from James (Sic) [ Jeff ] Cantwell at Seaport.

Jeffrey Cantwell

Analyst

The one I have for you is about Genius. The question is, what does Genius offer right now in terms of value-added services? Does that have an app store for merchants yet? Some of your competitors, particularly in the SMB space have had success with that. Can you maybe talk to us about whether that is part of the thinking now and going forward?

Robert Cortopassi

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald

James (Sic) [ Jeff ], it's Bob. I'm going to address the question, but could you restate -- you broke up a little bit what functionality are you asking about specifically?

Jeffrey Cantwell

Analyst

Sure. Just maybe just go through what Genius offers right now in terms of value-added services and also if there's any plans for an app store for merchants, particularly with regards to SMBs.

Robert Cortopassi

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald

Got it. App Store. Thanks for clarifying. So in terms of value-added services, what I would say is that there's a suite of value-added services that comprise 2 big categories. One is things that are available to everyone who's using Genius or maybe more specifically or useful to everyone who's using Genius and those are things around tools like embedded finance, client loyalty, social reputation management, scheduling and bookings engine, those sort of things. Then there are specific value-added services or feature functionality that's specific to a vertical. So when we think about something like spa salon, where you've got scheduling and client communications and those sort of things built into the workflow or when you think about an enterprise restaurant where you might be looking at a drive-thru management and digital menu boards in kiosks and things of that nature or you look at a field services business where you've got mobile invoicing and text to pay links and a mobile operating form factor and a distribution management scheduling of service providers or deliveries or whatever the case might be. So there's a pretty broad stack of feature functionality by vertical and value-added services that span all of it. Specific to an app store, look, I think our approach to that is one of making available easily, the ability to integrate incremental value-added services and feature functionality to the core Genius platform. And that same ease of integrating is used and consumed by our own developers but also available to third parties to plug in other value-added services. The idea of trying to reinvent an app store and create and open marketplace of a variety of quality of solutions, a variety of quality of integrations and a variety of quality of support for those plug-ins or apps. Frankly, I haven't seen that work very well in the market today and providers who've taken that approach end up with a graveyard of hundreds of failed solutions that are poorly integrated and poorly supported. So we're much more interested in curating a holistic, high-quality experience, whether those value-added services come directly from Global Payments or in partnership with a third party.

Operator

Operator

Our final question of today will come from Jason Kupferberg at Wells Fargo.

Jason Kupferberg

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Guys, I had 2 questions. I'll ask them upfront. First, just on the free cash flow. Are we reiterating the outyear targets? I think we had been talking about $4 billion in '27, $5 billion in '28, at least on an adjusted basis. So if we can cover that as well as what those numbers might look like on a GAAP basis, and then just any specific areas of conservatism you might point to in the initial top line outlook for '26?

Joshua Whipple

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Yes, Jason, it's Josh. Let me take the free cash flow question. So yes, we expect '27 to be over $4 billion in levered free cash flow and the $5 billion marker that you mentioned in 2028 from adjusted free cash flow perspective. And look, what I'd say from a GAAP perspective, as we move through the integration, and we expect our onetime cost to come down so that our GAAP free cash flow will go up. So again, that's something that we're very, very focused on across the transformation and the integration. So you should expect those onetime costs to come down and get free cash flow to go up.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Wells Fargo

And Jason, it's Cameron. Maybe on the second part of your question. I would just reiterate maybe some of the comments I shared earlier, which is, look, as the businesses are coming together for the first time here early in 2026, I think we've taken a fairly prudent approach to the outlook for the year. As I said, we're very focused on making sure that we get started on the right foot with the 2 businesses. We are realigning go-to-market activities based on client channel versus product, which is how we were oriented previously at Global and we just want to make sure that, obviously, as we're doing that, that we're able to focus on integration when we're getting the businesses and aligning go-to-market activities in the right way, so we get ourselves off on the right foot. Our outlook over the medium term, I think, remains the same. And as Josh highlighted, we expect to be exiting the year at a rate above 5%, which I think sets us up well heading into '27 and '28 as we talked about earlier.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's Q&A back to management for any final remarks.

Cameron Bready

Analyst · Baird

Thank you very much for joining us this morning. We apologize for going a little bit long, but we had a lot of content that we wanted to share. We appreciate your support in Global Payments and look forward to speaking with you very, very soon. Have a good day, everyone.