ACI Worldwide Lifts Earnings Outlook Despite a 12% Drop in Quarterly Revenue

ACI Worldwide said today (Thursday) that third-quarter revenue fell 12% year over year to $427 million. The payments software maker blamed the timing of license renewals, which this year fall mostly in the final quarter.

It still lifted its 2026 adjusted EBITDA forecast to $550 million to $565 million, from $545 million to $560 million, the third increase this year.

The guidance now leans heavily on a single quarter. The company expects fourth-quarter revenue of $612 million to $642 million, up 27% to 33% from $481.6 million a year earlier.

That equals about a third of ACI Worldwide's unchanged full-year revenue range of $1.895 billion to $1.925 billion, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation.

ACI set its first 2026 EBITDA range, $530 million to $550 million, in February. Adyen moved the other way last week, when it cut its 2026 EBITDA margin target to 50% and dropped its goal for 2028.

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Nearly Half of the Year's EBITDA Falls in One Quarter

ACI's sales have leaned toward the end of the year before, though not this far. The fourth quarter brought 27% of annual revenue in 2025 and 28% in 2024, based on the company's results, against the 32% to 33% now implied for 2026.

The tilt is steeper in earnings. Fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA guidance of $257 million to $272 million would equal 47% to 48% of the full-year range, compared with 32% in 2025 and 34% in 2024, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation.

"With high visibility into scheduled renewals, we are confident in our full-year outlook," Chief Executive Thomas Warsop said in the earnings release.

Some of ACI's contracts run for a decade, such as the 10-year deal Arab Financial Services, a processor owned by 37 banks, signed in 2024. License revenue, the line most exposed to the timing of such renewals, fell 41% to $94.8 million from $162 million.

Third-quarter revenue still landed at the top of ACI's own $417 million to $427 million forecast, and adjusted EBITDA of $97.5 million beat its $90 million to $95 million range. Adjusted EBITDA fell 43% from a year earlier, and net income dropped to $32.5 million from $91.3 million.

Connetic Gets Its First Live Customer

ACI is moving customers onto newer software. A first client went live on ACI Connetic, its cloud payments platform, in the quarter, two more signed up, and ACI bought card switching developer Cranium Ventures to extend Connetic for Cards.

On October 27, ACI and Circle said they would test settlement in the USDC stablecoin through Connetic, starting in Colombia. ACI built the central infrastructure there for Bre-B, the instant payments scheme that launched in 2025 with mandated interoperability.

Bank software vendors have added the token before. Finastra connected its Global PAYplus hub to USDC settlement in August 2025, letting banks settle in the stablecoin while payment instructions stay in fiat currency.

Recurring Revenue Grows as New Bookings Pick Up

The segment figures show where the shortfall sat. It came from Payment Software, the unit that sells to banks and to merchant processors such as Worldpay, which renewed its use of ACI's real-time payments software in 2024.

The unit's revenue fell 24% from a year earlier to $216 million, and its net adjusted EBITDA margin narrowed to 49% from 64%. ACI said it still expects upper-single-digit growth in Payment Software for 2026.

The Biller segment, which handles consumer bill payments, grew revenue 6% year over year to $210 million. Recurring revenue, made up of software-as-a-service and maintenance fees, rose 4% to $309 million.

New annual recurring revenue bookings rose 86% from a year earlier to $24 million. New license and services bookings fell 21% to $64 million, and over the trailing 12 months annual recurring revenue bookings were down 3% at $79 million.

Operating cash flow rose 26% to $254 million in the first nine months. ACI spent $157 million buying back 3.4 million shares over that period, at an average price of $45.69, and ended September with $219 million in cash and $821 million of debt.