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Investing.com -- RBC Capital Markets downgraded Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) Inc to Sector Perform from Outperform on rising execution risks and a more prolonged transformation following the company’s acquisition of Worldpay and sale of its Issuer Solutions business.

The brokerage slashed its price target to $86 from $139, warning that GPN’s strategic overhaul, intended to streamline operations, may create more complexity in the near term and delay meaningful returns until at least 2027.

“GPN’s glide path to a more simplified story has taken a wrong turn,” RBC (TSX:RY) analysts wrote, adding that GPN is moving away from its earlier playbook of consolidation and capital redeployment.

Global Payments recently announced it would sell its Issuer Solutions unit to Fidelity National Information Services (NASDAQ:III) for $13.5 billion and simultaneously acquire Worldpay for a net purchase price of $22.7 billion.

The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2026, includes $7.7 billion in new debt and gives private equity firm GTCR a 15% stake in GPN.

While management expects the combined business to become one of the largest payments processors globally, RBC is skeptical.

The ‘scale’ play hasn’t worked out as intended in the past, the note said, pointing to FIS’s own troubled history with Worldpay.

RBC flagged potential disruption over the next 12–18 months as GPN juggles integration efforts, platform consolidation, and debt financing, warning that even FY25 guidance may be hard to maintain.

Though the firm acknowledged GPN’s move toward becoming a “pure-play” payments company, it said growth and margin improvement may be limited without significant cost synergies, which are uncertain at this stage.

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