38% YOY
34% YOY
16% YOY
EBITDA MARGIN 47%
Ingo Uytdehaage
CFO
April 21, 2020
Figure 1
Weekly total processed volume and weekly travel volume indexed to the first week of January.
The decline in in-store retail volume due to lockdown measures is very visible, with large numbers of stores closed. Online retail volume largely compensates for the decline in in-store volume, and is steadily rising as shown in Figure 2. This underscores the robustness of unified commerce strategies — these merchants are able to seamlessly move volume from in-store to online sales channels.
Due to the shutdown of physical stores and other sales channels (e.g. call centers), we’ve seen a notable uptick in certain types of integrations, including in the use of our Pay by Link product — allowing merchants to take their activities online quickly.
Figure 2
Weekly retail processed volumes indexed to the first week of January.
* In-store retail volume is not a proxy for total point-of-sale volume.
We added 169 FTE in Q1 2020, totaling 1,351, compared to 1,182 at the end of FY 2019. We have not ceased hiring as we continue to invest in long-term growth. Of the new hires, 49% were in tech and 38% in commercial roles.
Absorbing new hires into the Adyen culture is naturally more difficult during these times, therefore we have chosen to limit hiring to critical roles for the time being. Senior management continues to see every new hire before they join the Adyen team, now via video conferencing software, as keeping the Adyen culture remains as crucial as ever.
Figure 3
Adyen’s Q1 2020 FTE growth.
We have business continuity protocols in place that allow us to continue our day-to-day activities while adjusting to this new normal. Adyen staff are fully equipped to work remotely, and have been doing so without impact to our payment processing ability.
We choose to invest in the longevity of the relationships with our merchants by working with them to ensure the sustainability of their business, in lieu of imposing stricter measures on a wide scale.
Our merchant portfolio is mostly made up of enterprise merchants and has been built with a long-term perspective in mind. We’ve historically been averse to onboarding high-risk volume as a part of this philosophy, which gives us added comfort in the current environment.
We continue to be able to connect merchants to the platform at our regular speed. However, some onboarding timelines have somewhat slowed due to merchants’ challenges in the current environment. We expect that these projects are merely delayed, and that onboarding timelines will return to normal once the situation stabilizes.
We have not altered our medium– to long-term guidance. In line with our long-term focus, we have not issued short-term guidance for this year.
An emergency bill allowing companies to organize virtual annual general meetings is likely to take effect in the Netherlands shortly. Adyen's AGM, scheduled for May 26, will be converted from a hybrid AGM – for which a convening notice was sent out on April 10 – to a virtual AGM as soon as this bill has taken effect.