New payments’ strategy unveiled

accesso has taken its payments’ strategy to the next level in selecting Adyen, the Dutch-based payments company, to be its long-term global financial technology platform. The platform will be white-labelled and enable accesso to offer integrated embedded payments’ capabilities across all of its products. Consequently, accesso will be able to increase wallet share from both existing and new clients. As present, accesso supports more than $5bn in annual transaction volume. We will next review our numbers following the release of the final results in April. In spite of the growth opportunities, the shares trade on a single-digit P/E.

• Payments’ strategy: Management previously stated its intention to expand into payments in order to take a larger share of the transaction “wallet”. The Adyen partnership lets accesso embed enterprise-grade, global, omnichannel payments into its platform without taking on the associated payments risks.
• Trading updates: In January, the group said Six Flags has extended the group’s virtual queuing solution for an initial year, while another major customer has discontinued the solution. Management took action to realign the cost base, and we assume $1m of restructuring costs. Management’s FY’26 outlook is in line.
• Further share repurchase: The company plans to undertake a tender offer to repurchase up to £14.5m (ca.$20m) of its shares. At the price of 300p, this would equate to around one eighth of the outstanding shares, with the value equating to the cash EBITDA that the group expects to generate in FY’26.
• Valuation: The stock trades on a modest 8.3x our FY’27E earnings, despite its operating in a growth market. Further, the group has attractive cash conversion metrics, a high level of repeatable revenues and a healthy net cash position. We note that US ticketing peer Eventbrite is being acquired at a >80% premium.
• Investment summary: accesso is a unique investment proposition in an ever-declining UK software universe, as peers continue to be snapped up by industry buyers and private equity. The stock rebased following the 2018 sell-off and pandemic and now trades at substantially more value-oriented levels, supported by improved cash generation. accesso sizes its total addressable market at $2.3bn, giving it a ca.5.6% market share and with plenty of scope for growth.