Is Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) a good stock to buy?
Two or more of our tested checks point the wrong way. When the survival check is one of them, no price makes that acceptable.
What each rating means, in numbers
Can it survive? — Very risky. Safer than 8% of the companies we cover, judged on the warning signs that came before companies that really did fail.
Business quality — Strong. Passes 6 of the 8 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, in every era and all twelve sectors.
How wild is the price? — Wild. The share price swings about 54% in a typical year, which puts it in the above average. Out of every 100 companies that swung like this, about 3.7 went bankrupt within the year. Across the three periods we tested that ran from 0.9% to 5.7%.
What "tested" means here, and why there is no score out of 100
Tested means the read was measured against what actually happened afterwards, on a history that keeps the companies that were later delisted, using only figures that had been filed on the day they are used. Survival was ranked on companies that really did fail. What an owner keeps was tested across the universe from 2011 to 2025.
The full record of everything we have tested is on the research pages.
Which benchmark. Over the period we tested, the median listed company returned +5.8% a year while the S&P 500 returned about +13.9% — the index is weighted by size and was carried by a handful of enormous winners. So "beats the index" and "beats the other companies you could have bought" are different questions. Where a read says it picks better companies, it means the second one. None of these gets you an index fund's return, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
The quality read is the strongest thing we have tested: 131,000 company-quarters across 5,300 companies, where the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, holding in every era and all twelve sectors. It still says less likely to break, not likely to beat the market — every band in that study lost to the index at the median, because the median listed company does.
Each read is shown on its own rather than merged into a single score, so you can see which part is strong and which is weak instead of taking an average on trust.
▾ What goes into the smart-money reading
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). It excludes the Altman Z score, whose retained-earnings input this filer does not report separately. See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
Chance the S&P 500 falls 10% or more in the next three months.
Counted from every day since 2006. Says nothing about FOUR — see the board for how it is measured.
📍 Where to start on this page, and what to look at first
How to read FOUR
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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1
Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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2
Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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3
Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
The share count we read for FOUR looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.
What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.
This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — FOUR's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.
Who owns FOUR, and how it moves
From the SEC's own filings: every fund manager over $100M reports its holdings each quarter, and every officer and director reports theirs. Each point is what was public at the time.
Riskier than 92% of the stocks we cover
What this rating means, and what it does not
What this rank is — Very risky. Riskier than 92% of the companies we cover. Out of every 100 companies ranked here, about 1.6% went bankrupt within the year, against 0.6% for the average company we cover. The rank comes from a model trained on every US filing since 2012, including 823 companies that really did fail, and scored each year by a version that had not seen that year.
What it is not — Not a trade. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010-2025. Every version lost money: the market already prices the distress and the survivors squeeze. A high rank is a reason to read the filings and to size for a total loss, not a reason to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
▾ The numbers, the logic, and why not to trade on it
The logic. A model trained on every US filing since 2012 — including 823 companies that went bankrupt or stopped trading under a dollar — ranks each covered stock by its chance of failing in the next year, from its latest filing, price history and credit conditions. The rank is a position among peers; the table is a count of what happened to stocks in each position, scored each year by a model that had not seen that year.
| Rank band | went bankrupt within 12 months | fell 80% or more (or failed) within 12 months | fell 50% or more (or failed) within 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| All covered stocks (average) | 0.59% | 4.21% | 8.51% |
| Other (construction, transport, services) (sector average) | 0.48% | 3.35% | 7.44% |
| riskiest 1% | 16.4% | 33.0% | 45.5% |
| next 2% (97-99) | 5.9% | 24.9% | 38.2% |
| next 2% (95-97) | 3.4% | 21.2% | 33.8% |
| next 5% (90-95) ← this stock | 1.6% | 15.1% | 27.3% |
| next 15% (75-90) | 0.8% | 8.5% | 17.8% |
| next 25% (50-75) | 0.2% | 2.7% | 6.2% |
| safest half | <0.1% | 0.5% | 2.1% |
Why not to trade on it. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010–2025: every version lost money. The market already prices the distress, and the survivors squeeze. Use a high rank to read the filings and to size for a total loss — not to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
Scored from the most recent SEC filing we had (dated 2026-05-08), which can be a quarterly report newer than the yearly figures used elsewhere on this page; scores last updated 2026-09-18. Within Other (construction, transport, services): rank 91 of 100. Rough one-year odds for this stock alone: bankruptcy 1.2%, an 80% fall 7.1% (the model overstates the middle of the range). On the same data, the Altman Z score caught 26% of bankruptcies in its riskiest 5%; this rank caught 59%.
▾ The logic, and why not to buy on it
The logic. Trained on 2,900 acquisitions since 2012, the model leans on size (small), age, retained earnings, asset growth, volatility and how many deals the sector has just seen. Announcement = the day the stock jumped, not the day the paperwork was filed.
| top 1% | 15.4% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (97-99) | 10.3% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (95-97) | 9.0% acquired within a year |
| next 5% (90-95) | 7.3% acquired within a year |
| next 15% (75-90) | 6.4% acquired within a year |
| next 25% (50-75) ← this stock | 4.8% acquired within a year |
| bottom half | 3.0% acquired within a year |
Why not to buy on it. A takeover paid a median +22% on the day — but even in the top band about 6 in 7 companies are not bought, and those lag. Buying the whole top list returned what the S&P 500 did (2012–2023), and adding "cheap" or "beaten-down" filters did not change that. Read it as context for a thesis you already have, never as the thesis.
How does FOUR stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 6 same- or closely-related-industry companies closest in size to FOUR and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If FOUR is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
| EV / SalesEV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt). Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices. Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding Full explanation → |
0.3x / 0.6x / 0.9x |
| EV / EBITEV / EBITDA — Enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Why it matters: A classic "what would a private buyer pay" multiple — used in M&A. Strips out tax and capital-structure noise. Reference: 8–12x for mature businesses · 15–25x for growth · Below 5x often signals distress Full explanation → |
8.1x / 25.8x / 32.7x |
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 6 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HGBL | Heritage Global Inc. | Business Services | $46M | 0.9x | — | 8.1x | 21.4% |
| TDTH | Trident Digital Tech Holdings Ltd | Business Services | $60M | 374.8x | 732.1x | — | — |
| GRABW | Grab Holdings Ltd | Business Services | $73M | 0.6x | — | 32.7x | 49.5% |
| SCOR | COMSCORE, INC. | Business Services | $75M | 0.3x | — | 25.8x | 72.9% |
| RYDE | Ryde Group Ltd | Business Services | $87M | 8.9x | — | — | 2.3% |
| XBP | XBP Global Holdings, Inc. | Business Services | $29M | 0.5x | 2.2x | — | 20.8% |
| TC | Token Cat Ltd | Business Services ·fallback | $55M | 65.2x | 2,300.1x | — | 0.3% |
| RSSS | Research Solutions, Inc. | Business Services ·fallback | $72M | 1.5x | 2.9x | 19.9x | 7.7% |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
What these health ratings mean, in numbers
Business quality — Strong. Passes 6 of the 8 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% within a year against 1.4% for the strongest, and that held in every era and all twelve sectors. It says "less likely to break", not "likely to beat the market".
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
We can't produce a trustworthy Altman Z here: retained earnings weren't separately reported in our data, so a core input would have to be fabricated. Rather than show a categorical "distress" verdict from an invented number, we mark it unavailable. The classic manufacturing-calibrated model also fits asset-light businesses like this one poorly. Judge financial health from the leverage, cash position, and the measurable Piotroski checks instead.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✓ Positive net incomeNet income $119.0M in FY2025.
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✓ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow $634.0M (was $500.0M the prior year).
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow $634.0M vs net income $119.0M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets 1.4% vs 4.6% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 52.2% of assets vs 56.4% a year ago ($4,546.0M of $8,713.0M assets).
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✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 1.66x vs 1.39x a year ago.
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✓ Share count (dilution)Share count declined 20.1% (1.7M → 1.3M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.48x vs 0.66x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
A standard DCFDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → valuation is not meaningful for Shift4 Payments due to an extreme valuation output, likely caused by data or unit issues, and a high FCFFree Cash Flow (FCF) — Operating cash flow minus capital spending: cash left after a company covers operating costs, taxes and interest and reinvests in the business — but BEFORE repaying debt principal or paying dividends. The cash actually available to investors.
Why it matters: A company can show big profits on paper while burning through cash. FCF is what actually fills the bank account.
Reference: Healthy mature businesses convert 8–15% of revenue into FCF · Growth companies often negative
Full explanation →/Share relative to price. The company exhibits strong revenue growth (32.2%/yr over 4 years) and consistent positive operating cash flow, suggesting investors are betting on continued expansion in its payment processing services. The #1 quantifiable risk is the rising long-term debt, which has increased from $1.7 billion to $4.5 billion.
As of 4 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Continued high double-digit revenue growth rates
- Stabilization or reduction in the rate of long-term debt increase
- Expansion into new merchant verticals or geographies
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue grew +25% to $4.18B.
- Free cash flow rose to $542.0M.
- Net income fell -48% to $119.0M.
Management & Leadership
Shift4 Payments is led by its founder and CEO, Jared Isaacman, who has been instrumental in the company's growth since its inception. He also serves as Chairman of the Board, indicating significant leadership continuity and vision.
What They Make
Shift4 Payments provides end-to-end payment processing solutions and technology to businesses, primarily serving the hospitality, retail, and entertainment sectors.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market is pricing Shift4 based on its significant revenue growth, which has been 32.2% per year over the last four years, and its consistent profitability and positive operating cash flow. Investors are likely focused on the company's ability to continue expanding its market share and payment processing volume, rather than current cash flow, given the 'Extreme valuation' flag.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company is buying back 4% of shares per year, indicating a return of capital to shareholders in addition to funding its growth.
Free Cash Flow DCF
This is the model the pipeline would normally apply to a company like this. Its output failed our checks here, so no intrinsic value is published; the notes below are context, not a valuation.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 32.2% |
| Historical Fcf Growth | 35.5% |
| Sector Default | 12.0% |
| Best Estimate | 26.2% |
| Method | blend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector)+buyback(4%) |
| Growth Basis | total |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings cash-flow model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project product, services and recurring/cloud lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has grown at 32.2% per year over four years, from $1.4 billion to $4.2 billion.
Geography & Markets
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)53.0NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (4 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (4)
- Latest FCF ($0.5B) is 4.6x net income ($0.1B) - using 3yr avg FCF to reduce one-time inflation.
- Growth capped at 25%/yr: the company is buying back 4% of shares per year on top of the underlying business growth, which would push per-share growth above 25% — we cap that to keep the model conservative.
- Extreme valuation (P/IV withheld — see the note above); output dominated by data/units issue (often a multi-class share-count mismatch). Suppressed.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Shift4 Payments, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 4.2B | 119.0M | $89.23 |
| 2024 | 3.3B | 230.0M | $137.82 |
| 2023 | 2.6B | 86.0M | $44.28 |
| 2022 | 2.0B | 75.1M | $19.43 |
| 2021 | 1.4B | -48.2M | $-0.61 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 634.0M | 10.0M | 82.0M | 542.0M |
| 2024 | 500.0M | 7.0M | 65.0M | 428.0M |
| 2023 | 346.0M | 14.0M | 57.0M | 275.0M |
| 2022 | 275.4M | 8.0M | 49.6M | 217.8M |
| 2021 | 3.0M | 8.2M | 40.8M | -46.0M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 634.0M − 10.0M − 82.0M (SBC & adj.) = 542.0M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a trailing 3-year average, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 8.7B |
| Total Liabilities | 6.8B |
| Equity | 1.4B |
| Total Debt | 4.5B |
Similar companies worth a look
Same sector and industry, similar fundamentals shape. Verify everything yourself — this list is computed mechanically and does not reflect our judgment about whether any of these are a good investment.
The questions people ask about FOUR
Is Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) a good stock to buy?
We do not publish a single fair value for Shift4 Payments, Inc., because one number would not be reliable for this business (the page explains why). Judge it on what today's price assumes, its financial-health checks and what insiders are doing, all shown here from SEC filings. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Is Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) overvalued?
A single fair-value number is not reliable for Shift4 Payments, Inc., so we do not call it overvalued or undervalued. The page shows what growth today's price assumes and how the company's finances look instead. This is educational research from SEC filings, not investment advice.
Where do these numbers come from?
From Shift4 Payments, Inc.'s own SEC filings (10-K and 10-Q), Form 4 insider filings and daily market prices. Every figure on the page links to how it was calculated, and the model's weak spots are listed next to its results.