Takis Georgakopoulos used his first earnings call to signal divestitures, a partnerships push and $100m of tech spending as Clover growth slows.
Fiserv CEO Takis Georgakopoulos has launched a review of the company’s product portfolio, two months into his tenure and on the same day the payments firm cut its full-year 2026 guidance.
Georgakopoulos told analysts he is initiating a “dispassionate” portfolio review to assess product competitiveness, reflecting a move away from building all client solutions internally in favour of partnerships.
Fiserv has already exited its student loan servicing, ATM and India businesses, and Georgakopoulos said further underperforming units could be sold: “These were the right decisions, but these alone do not move the needle.”
The company plans to spend more than $100m on technology infrastructure and cybersecurity in the second half of 2026.
Fiserv is also centralising its product and technology organisation, applying the Merchant Solutions structure across the Financial Solutions segment to eliminate duplication.
The company deepened its partnership with Mastercard during the quarter, integrating Mastercard’s Merchant Cloud into Commerce Hub, which Georgakopoulos said would fill geographic and capability gaps in the enterprise pipeline.
Georgakopoulos took the CEO role in June following Mike Lyons’ departure for Truist Financial. The former JPMorgan executive joined Fiserv in late 2024.
Fiserv’s Clover growth slows
Clover, Fiserv’s point-of-sale and business management platform for merchants, recorded slowing revenue in the quarter.
Lower sales of hardware and data reduced Clover revenue by about 9% in the quarter, with weaker revenue from Argentina cutting it by a further 2%, according to Fiserv’s earnings presentation.
Clover gross payment volume grew 9% on a reported basis and 11% excluding a gateway conversion. Value-added services now contribute 25% of Clover’s top line, and Western Alliance Bank went live on the platform during the quarter.
“We are experiencing incremental headwinds in our hardware revenue in merchant,” Georgakopoulos said, adding that boosting profit will depend on new Clover features landing with customers: “As we deliver those things, we improve customer service and customers are happy, we will have more ability to generate higher yields.”
The Financial Solutions segment recorded steeper declines than Merchant, with organic revenue down 8% in the quarter against Merchant’s 1% fall. Finxact accounts and positions grew more than 75%, with client wins including Flagstar Bank and UW Credit Union.
Guidance cut for a second year
Fiserv now expects 2026 organic revenue of flat to down 1% and adjusted earnings per share of $7.20 to $7.40, down from prior projections of 1% to 3% organic growth and $8.00 to $8.30. The company had reaffirmed its second-half outlook as recently as June 15.
Georgakopoulos attributed the cut to Argentina’s macroeconomic conditions, delayed client implementations, slower execution on growth initiatives and the additional technology investment, which together removed about four percentage points from previous second-half revenue growth expectations.
Argentina alone created a 90 basis point headwind to Q2 adjusted revenue, hitting the company’s anticipation business through inflation and interest rate volatility.
Georgakopoulos said the client delays reflected timing rather than lost business, citing a large customer that pushed a September go-live back a quarter to complete a merger: “There’s nothing fundamentally changing in terms of the deal, in terms of the size of the deal, just the timing moves out by a quarter.”
Second-quarter adjusted EPS fell 26% year-on-year to $1.84, and adjusted revenue declined 4% to $4.96bn. GAAP EPS dropped 37% to $1.17. Group GAAP operating margin narrowed to 19.2% from 30.7% a year earlier, weighed by $187m of costs from the One Fiserv transformation programme in the quarter.
Fiserv shares fell as much as 12% in premarket trading on Thursday and have lost roughly 60% of their value over the trailing 12 months.
