Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR): A Bull Case Theory

We came across a bullish thesis on Shift4 Payments, Inc. on Coughlin Capital’s Substack by Brian Coughlin. In this article, we will summarize the bulls’ thesis on FOUR. Shift4 Payments, Inc.’s share was trading at $80.93 as of September 24th. FOUR’s trailing and forward P/E were 31.50 and 12.06 respectively according to Yahoo Finance.

Shift4 (FOUR) is a $7.5 billion market cap company growing ~30% annually, positioned as a sticky, software-led commerce platform rather than just a “vertical processor.” The company has a clear roadmap toward ~$1 billion in free cash flow by 2027, supported by operating leverage and a high-return-on-invested-capital model. Founder-led alignment strengthens the case, as the CEO remains deeply involved and has been buying shares in the open market.

Despite its fundamentals, the stock remains mispriced because investors tend to lump it into the broader payments space, often perceived as hyper-competitive and commoditized. However, Shift4’s value proposition is far from commoditized—once it embeds itself into merchant workflows through point-of-sale, ordering, loyalty, and payments, it becomes essential infrastructure. This stickiness creates durable customer relationships and pricing power.

The company already has a dominant footprint, processing payments for about one-third of U.S. sit-down restaurants, 40% of hotels, and nearly three-quarters of professional sports stadiums. This scale underscores its role as critical infrastructure within major consumer-facing industries, where switching costs are high and reliability is paramount. Its dual role—running both the front-end software merchants use to take payments and the back-end rails that move the money—ensures multiple monetization points across the value chain.

Investors may be overlooking this evolution, continuing to frame Shift4 narrowly as a vertical payments processor rather than as a global commerce platform with expanding reach. With strong growth, embedded infrastructure, founder alignment, and a path to material free cash flow generation, Shift4 offers an attractive investment opportunity with significant rerating potential.

Previously we covered a bullish thesis on Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) by Next 100 Baggers in May 2025, which highlighted strong Q1 results, governance improvements, M&A synergies, and rapid international expansion. The company’s stock price has depreciated approximately by 2.8% since our coverage. This is because the thesis did not fully play out. The thesis still stands as Brian Coughlin shares a similar view but emphasizes embedded infrastructure and free cash flow trajectory.