Worldline (Euronext: WLN), a French payment services provider, published its results, reporting 8.3 percent organic growth in its Q4 2022 revenue that surpassed market expectations of a rise of 7.7 percent in revenue. The absolute figure came in at about €1.19 billion.
Worldline Sees Solid Growth
The official figures show that the company's performance excelled in merchant services, which brought in €835 million, growing at a rate of 10.3 percent from the previous year. Additionally, revenue from financial services saw an uptick of 2.9 percent to €260 million. Though the mobile and e-transactional services of the group showed a growth rate of 7 percent, its contribution to the total revenue was only €92 million.
"Our particularly strong revenue growth and commercial momentum clearly demonstrate the full benefit of Ingenico combination, despite us being only half-way through our four-year integration plan. It also highlights improvement of our profitability rate and solid free cash flow generation, despite the inflationary environment," said the CEO of Worldline, Gilles Grapinet.
Indeed, the group's free cash flow jumped by 25.5 percent at the end of the year as it had €520 million.
The Ending of An Excellent Year
The French payments giant closed 2022 with an overall yearly revenue of more than €4.3 billion, which is 10.7 percent higher than the previous year. Its operating margin before depreciation and amortization (OMDA) came in at €1.13 billion, which is 26 percent of the revenue.
The group generated a net income of €299 million compared to a loss of €751 million in the previous year. Future, the net income group share from continued operations came in at €211 million, which is 10.3 percent higher, and normalized net income raised by 23.8 percent to €545 million. The group ended the year with normalized basic earnings per share 23.4 percent higher at €1.94, while the diluted figure jumped 22.9 percent to €1.88.
After ending 2022, Worldline is now ambitious with its 2023 expectations. The group expects an organic revenue growth of 8 to 10 percent in the ongoing year. On top of that, it is expecting a 100 basis points growth in OMDA.
Simplifying Corporate Structure
Meanwhile, the group is focused on simplifying its structure. The group sold its TSS activities to Apollo Funds last October for a total consideration of €2.3 billion. On the other hand, it agreed to acquire Italy's Banco Desio's merchant acquiring activities for $100 million.
"We… continued to actively participate to the European market consolidation and to expand our Merchant Services business in attractive geographies. In line with our product strategy, we further enriched the Worldline value proposition through targeted acquisitions of technological companies on the marketplaces vertical and the micro-merchant segment," Grapinet added.
