Troubling economic conditions are continuing to vex Shift4 Payments, with the point-of-sale processor beset by travel weakness in Europe and reduced dining in the U.S.

Shift4 is navigating “a more challenging backdrop than we’ve seen in recent years,” CEO Taylor Lauber wrote in a shareholder letter accompanying the company’s third-quarter results on Thursday. The company cut its profit outlook and gross revenue target for the full year, with weak conditions expected to persist into 2027.

“Our business has been tested in many different ways this year, forcing us to adapt the business and make challenging calls,” Lauber said Thursday on a conference call with analysts to discuss the results. 

Fallout from the Iran conflict has bedeviled Shift4 in the European retail market, where it operates with Global Blue, the Swiss payments technology firm it acquired last year for $2.5 billion, including taking on $1 billion in debt. The Middle East and southeast Asia are significant sources of travel customers for Global Blue’s tax-free shopping business, which represents about 20% of Shift4 revenues. 

Beyond the European retail woes, inflation-fatigued Americans are also dining out less. Restaurant sales not only haven’t improved in the second half of 2026, as the company had expected, some comparisons turned negative in October relative to last year, Chief Financial Officer Christopher Cruz said.

Given the conditions, Shift4 has adopted “a conservatism in the way we're looking at the variety of challenges this year” for its financial modeling, as the overall operating environment makes it “hard not to be influenced towards a more cautious approach,” Cruz said in response to an analyst’s question about factors affecting Shift4’s views of 2027.

Shift4 also announced its purchase of Paramount Commerce, a Toronto-based pay-by-bank firm. Terms of the deal, expected to close in the next few weeks, were not disclosed. Paramount enables pay-by-bank deposits and payouts in Canada for companies that include the sports betting sites DraftKings and FanDuel, and Canadian telecommunications firm Telus, Shift4 said in its Thursday third-quarter earnings presentation.

“Bank rails carry the lion’s share of payment volumes in many markets, and account-to-account fits transactions where cards run into limits,” Lauber said on a conference call Thursday with analysts. “This is a kind of normal-course, tuck-in (purchase) that fits right into the Shift4 playbook.”

One issue troubling investors is that Shift4 has failed to articulate a long-term strategy, “especially around Global Blue,” William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey wrote last month in a report for the investment firm’s clients. 

The acquisition occurred under former CEO Jared Isaacman, who left the company last year when he was confirmed as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“Our sense is that investors still don’t have a good sense of why this deal happened, whether it was the former CEO’s passion project or it simply reflected a desire for scale,” Jeffrey wrote Oct. 20. Shift4 has “substantial cross-sell potential” with Global Blue among its smaller and medium sized business customers, but hasn’t yet demonstrated it can monetize a new POS device it rolled out to 15 European countries this year.

In a note Thursday, Jeffrey further suggested that Shift4 has relied on a dated model of buying independent software vendors and small acquirers at attractive prices, replacing legacy software systems, and monetizing the technology. 

“This strategy was successful when Shift4 was much smaller, money was free, the merchant processing industry was less competitive, and Shift4 had a knowledge advantage,” he wrote. “Those circumstances no longer exist, in our opinion.”

Shift4 shares have lost about 36% over the past year, including a 4.5% drop on Thursday.

“The share price has clearly not reflected the durability, diversity, and outright caliber of our business and the optimism we feel inside the company,” the CEO said, noting in his remarks that Shift4’s employees, management and founder own about 42% of the company, which is based near Allentown, Pennsylvania. 

Later in the call, Lauber said that “market sentiment in both our business and the broader sector is one that is not rewarding much and is punishing any misgivings.”