Accesso Technology Group plc (LON:ACSO) is the topic of conversation when Hardman & Co’s Analyst Richard Jeans caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview.
Q1: You just published a report on the company titled ‘New Payment Strategy Unveiled’ but before we talk about that, can you just remind us on what Accesso Technology Group does?
A1: Accesso is a specialist vertical software company that provides mission critical technology to the leisure industry; that’s attractions, cultural venues, and live entertainment operators worldwide. Its solutions are designed to optimise the end-to-end guest journey, and they ultimately enable venues to increase revenue. Accesso serves more than 1,100 venues across 33 countries.
It combines data-driven software with deep operational expertise, and many of its staff have worked directly in the attractions industry. This domain knowledge underpins its focus on increasing onsite and offsite spending, improving capacity utilisation, and helping clients to make better commercial marketing decisions.
Q2: What were the key highlights in your report?
A2: Accesso has selected Adyen as its global, white-labelled payments platform, that was the key focus. This partnership enables embedded payments across its product suite and positions the group to increase wallet share.
This positive development comes alongside a challenging theme park industry backdrop, which has put particular pressure on the group’s virtual queuing business. While Six Flags has extended its virtual queuing contract with Accesso for a further year, another major customer has exited virtual queuing.
Nevertheless, management has realigned the cost base, and the current year guidance remains in line. Capital allocation is supportive, with a proposed £14.5 million tender offer at 300p. That would retire around 12.7% of the share base, and with the cost being broadly equivalent to the expected cash EBITDA for the current year. Despite these positives, the shares trade on a single-digit earnings multiple.
Q3: What can you tell me about the implications of the recent trading updates?
A3: The Accesso January trading updates highlighted near-term customer changes in virtual queuing but also underlined the resilience and strategic importance of the product. Notably, Six Flags elected to continue using Accesso’s solution for a further year, having previously decided not to continue with this product.
So in our view, this reflects the virtual queuing solution’s market-leading capabilities, patent protection, and the difficulty of replacement for a mission-critical revenue-optimising system.
In addition, the group guided last year’s revenue slightly ahead of expectations at around $155 million, with cash EBITDA margins approaching 15%, demonstrating improving operational leverage and discipline and cost management, despite the challenging demand backdrop for theme parks.
Management also reported strong commercial momentum entering into the current year, driven by better execution and solid performance of Freedom. Freedom is the group’s food and beverage and retail point of sale product, and also Paradox, which is the ski solution focused on the North American ski resorts industry. There has been swift cost-based realignment also to protect profitability.
Q4: Just going back to Adyen, then. Why is that partnership so important?
A4: The Adyen partnership is important because it meaningfully deepens the group’s role in the customer value chain. By embedding white-labelled payments across its products, Accesso can capture a larger share of the transaction value it already facilitates, strengthening monetisation without increasing balance sheet or regulatory risk.
Adyen’s global unified payments infrastructure also enhances the group’s proposition to large multi-site venues by reducing complexity, improving authorisation rates, and lowering total costs, which should support customer retention, increase switching costs, and reinforce Accesso’s competitive position as venues increasingly favour integrated end-to-end technology platforms.
Q5: Why is the company buying back so many shares at the moment?
A5: The group’s decision to buy back such a large proportion of its shares reflects a combination of balance sheet capacity, value judgement, and capital allocation priorities. Having generated strong cash flows and exited 2025 with a robust financial position, the group has surplus capital beyond its near-term operational and investment needs.
Management is signalling that at around 300p it views the shares as materially undervalued relative to the long-term earnings and cash generation potential of the business. That makes buybacks an attractive use of capital versus the alternatives.
Q6: Just turning to AI, how should investors look at or price in AI disruption risks?
A6: We would be wary about being overly cautious. Accesso is a vertical specialist while we think AI risk is higher among horizontal SaaS peers. Accesso’s moat is rooted in domain-specific operational expertise, long-standing customer relationships, and software that directly underpins revenue generation for venues. These characteristics raise switching costs and limit the scope for AI native entrants to disintermediate incumbents quickly.
Q7: Now, your report, you’ve updated your new forecasts. Can you just give us an update on those new forecasts?
A7: We moved our 2025 revenue and cash EBITDA forecasts higher in line with the small beat outlined in the scheduled update in late January. So, in light of the two updates in January, the early January one, the late January one, we cut our revenue forecast this year and next year. We also forecast $1 million of cash-based restructuring costs in the current year. After taking into account the cost reductions from these restructurings, our cash EBITDA forecasts fall by 3.3% this year and 6.7% next year.
Nevertheless, our 2027 earnings per share forecasts have moved higher by 8% as a result of the reduced share count due to the buybacks. So, our forecast net cash position for the end of the current year comes back by $22 million. That’s after taking into account the $20 million tender offer, as well as the $1 million restructuring charges.
Q8: Just to finish up, how would you describe the company in terms of an investment case?
A8: The stock trades on around 8.5 times earnings for 2027. The group has a strong net cash position, healthy cash generation, and FY27 free cash flow yield is around 11%.
Further, the quality of the business has been improving; 85% repeatable revenues, along with improving operating margins on our forecast. The stock trades at a significant discount to its peer group, which we believe is unwarranted.
