The Amsterdam payment company Adyen, stimulated by the corona pandemic, turned over more than a billion euros for the first time last year. This became apparent on Wednesday when the figures for the second half of 2021 were presented.
The annual revenue of Adyen, which processes digital payments, grew by 46 percent. Gross operating profit (EBITDA) was more than half the year before, at 630 million euros.
Adyen (founded in 2006) is a fintech company that handles digital payments for companies such as Spotify, Uber and De Bijenkorf. In addition, the company is increasingly taking care of payment in physical stores.
Adyen processed more than €500 billion in payments last year. It exceeded analysts’ expectations. An important part of the growth came from the United States, where turnover increased by 74 percent. On Wednesday morning, the Adyen share was one of the biggest risers on the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Peaks and valleys
Adyen has had a year of ups and downs. The growth in webshops and online orders during the corona pandemic led to a huge price increase in the first half of 2021. But increased inflation and rising interest rates have put the share, like many other tech companies, under considerable pressure in recent months. Adyen’s stock market value has fallen more than 20 percent in the past six months.
Also read: Where Adyen thrives in the corona crisis, ABN ails
CEO Pieter van der Does sees the stock price “not as an indicator of how well we are doing”, he said in a telephone explanation of the figures on Wednesday morning. “I see no reward or punishment in that. You just move along as a company. We are working on the long term.”
Fight for people
To sustain the growth, Adyen (2,180 employees) wants to hire more employees quickly. In the last six months, 226 have already been added. That was less than the company hoped. “We would like to hire more people, but we are not going to compromise on quality. This fight for good people is something that affects the entire tech industry,” says Van der Does.
Adyen spent more than 120 million euros extra for staff last year, money that was mainly used for new office buildings. It opened a location on the Rokin in Amsterdam and offices in Chicago and Madrid. Salaries for the highly sought-after software developers also increased.
Permanently working from home employees, which some US tech companies are now allowing to hire more people, is not an immediate option for Adyen. “We have a lot of young people who would like to meet each other at the office,” says Van der Does. “We even see that the number of workplaces in the office has quickly ‘sold out’ during the corona period. All the way remote working is not logical for us.”