Dive Brief:

• Global Payments CEO Jeff Sloan said Monday he’s stepping down from his role and the company’s president and chief operating officer, Cameron Bready, will become chief executive as of June 1.
• Bready, 51, will join the company’s board and retain his role as president, the Atlanta-based company disclosed during its first-quarter earnings conference call with analysts. As he leaves Global Payments, Sloan will also exit the company’s board, according to a news release on the transition.
• “Jeff and I have pretty much been locked at the hip for the last nine years, so you shouldn't expect a radical deviation in strategy,” Bready told analysts during the call.

Dive Insight:

Sloan joined the company as Global Payments’ president in 2010 and was named CEO in 2013, according to the company’s website. Bready began working at Global Payments the following year, first serving as the company’s chief financial officer. He became president and COO in 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Global Payments reported a first-quarter net loss of $4.4 million, compared to a profit of $249.6 million in the year-earlier quarter, as revenue climbed 6.3% to $2.29 billion, according to an earnings press release.

When Wolfe Research Analyst Darrin Peller asked Sloan about the timing of his exit, Sloan said now is the right time because the company is “back in an environment of normalcy.”

Additionally, Sloan said he and the company’s board agreed that the completion of recent important strategic transactions underscored the timing consideration. The company’s $4 billion acquisition of industry peer Evo Payments closed in late March, nine months after the purchase was announced, and the divestitures of Global Payments’ Netspend consumer business for $1 billion and its gaming payments unit for $415 million also closed recently. 

With those in the rearview mirror, Global Payments now has the “simpler model more geared towards our corporate customers” that executives began talking about last August, Bready said. For the remainder of the year, the company is focused on getting back to its target leverage ratio and ensuring Evo Payments is well-integrated, he said.

With his appointment, Bready and the company entered into a new employment agreement that sets his annual salary at $1 million, “and his target annual bonus opportunity will be not less than 200% of his then-current base salary,” according to a Monday company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Bready has been integral to Global Payments’ performance in recent years, Baird Equity Research analysts wrote in a Monday note to investor clients. “Transitions within fin tech have generally gone quite well,” analysts wrote. “We view Cameron Bready as a top fin tech executive, and the company will continue to be in great hands.”