I opened Global Payments' report for the quarter ended 31 March 2026 to find one line, and it is there: "on January 9, 2026, we acquired 100% of Worldpay from FIS and affiliates of GTCR." GTCR was paid "approximately $6.0 billion in cash and (2) 42.8 million shares of Global Payments common stock." Total purchase consideration recognised in the accounts was $16,977,797 thousand, just under $17 billion.
That figure surprised me at first. The deal had been announced at $24.25 billion. The recognised figure is roughly 30% lower. Nobody did anything wrong. The two numbers measure different things, and Worldpay is the best public example I know of one business carrying several enterprise values at once.
The April 2025 announcement already held two of them. Global Payments said it would buy Worldpay for "a net purchase price of $22.7 billion, or total value of $24.25 billion including $1.55 billion of anticipated tax assets." Same acquisition, same day, two prices a billion and a half apart.
The multiple came in the same release: "this reflects a 12.3x adjusted EBITDA multiple for Issuer Solutions and an 8.5x adjusted EBITDA multiple for Worldpay on a net basis inclusive of run-rate synergies." The synergies were spelled out as "significant expected expense synergies of $600 million, revenue synergies of at least $200 million", to be delivered over three years after closing.
The words "inclusive of run-rate synergies" are where I slowed down. They mean the 8.5 is measured against earnings that include savings the buyer has not made yet.
So I reversed the calculation myself. $22.7 billion divided by 8.5 gives about $2.671 billion of adjusted EBITDA with synergies. Take out the $600 million of expense synergies and a standalone proxy is about $2.071 billion. Against that base, the $24.25 billion total value is 11.71 times and the $22.7 billion net price is 10.96 times. The multiple presented as 8.5 is 37.8% higher on the business as it stood.
If you are selling a company and a buyer quotes you a multiple, this is the question to ask first: on which earnings? A price can be presented as 8.5 times or as nearly 12 times with neither figure being false, and a founder who negotiates against the lower one is negotiating against the buyer's own future savings. Ask the buyer to show the base. A refusal tells you something too.
Even the kind case does not close the gap. If only half the expense synergies arrive, the proxy is $2.371 billion and the multiple on total value is 10.23 times, still above 8.5.
I wanted a research reason to prefer one base over another. The paper I rely on is "Equity Valuation Using Multiples" by Jing Liu, Doron Nissim and Jacob Thomas, in the Journal of Accounting Research in 2002. Their headline: "multiples derived from forward earnings explain stock prices remarkably well: pricing errors are within 15 percent of stock prices for about half our sample."
Their ranking held across nearly every industry: "forward earnings measures are followed by historical earnings measures, cash flow measures and book value of equity are tied for third, and sales performs the worst." I read that as support for forward earnings. It is not support for forward earnings plus a buyer's hopes, and nothing in the paper licenses adding synergies to the base.
The earlier marks complete the set. FIS announced its 2019 purchase at "an enterprise value of approximately $43 billion, including the assumption of Worldpay debt, which FIS expects to refinance." In 2023 it sold 55% to GTCR at an $18.5 billion valuation, at "a 9.8-times multiple on expected fiscal 2023 adjusted EBITDA."
So one merchant acquirer carried about $43 billion, then $18.5 billion, then $24.25 billion, then $16,977,797 thousand in an acquirer's books, over seven years. I have looked at these four numbers side by side more often than is reasonable.
Now a caution about my own arithmetic. My calculation assumes expense synergies reduce earnings one for one, that the $200 million of revenue synergies sit outside the 8.5, and that nothing else hides inside the word "adjusted". Global Payments has not published a standalone Worldpay EBITDA. Every restated multiple here is mine.
And the bridge between $24.25 billion and $22.7 billion is the $1.55 billion of anticipated tax assets. A tax shelter used over a decade is not cash at closing, so I would discount it for timing rather than count it at face value. How much to discount, I cannot tell from anything published.
The closing figure is different in kind again. The 10-Q says Global Payments valued the business it handed over using "a third-party valuation using the average of the income and market approaches." That makes $16.98 billion a fair value measurement of a swap, not an enterprise value at all. I have not found a reconciliation between the three figures anywhere, and I still cannot say which one a comparable table should use.