Monness, Crespi, Hardt shifted its stance on Fiserv (NYSE:FI), downgrading the stock from Neutral to Sell and assigning a $145 price target. The downgrade comes amid rising skepticism over the company’s ability to deliver on ambitious growth projections, particularly tied to its Clover merchant platform.
According to the firm, achieving the company’s 2026–2027 growth targets would require aggressive expansion and upselling in Clover’s restaurant and retail segments—efforts that may prove difficult without offering pricing concessions. Weaker performance signals are already emerging from Fiserv’s SMB index, with noticeable softening in categories central to Clover’s success.
While Fiserv’s balance sheet remains strong, with manageable debt maturities and solid free cash flow, Monness sees these fundamentals as insufficient to offset concerns around weakening transaction trends and constrained value-added service (VAS) penetration. The firm believes the current stock price still embeds overly optimistic assumptions about Clover’s trajectory, including expectations for international growth and deepening product cross-sell opportunities.
As such, the risk that Fiserv will need to walk back its bullish guidance is rising, prompting the downgrade and a more cautious outlook on the stock moving forward.
