Stripe, Now Gushing Money, Plans New Employee Tender

Stripe is planning a new tender offer to buy back shares held by employees, but it will finance this one entirely with its own cash, unlike in previous employee tenders. The financing approach shows how much the payment processing firm’s business has improved from the slump it experienced a couple of years ago.

The company had about $615 million in free cash flow in the quarter that ended in June, two people with direct knowledge of its financial performance said. That compares with Stripe’s cash burn of more than $500 million in 2022, when the company was dealing with the impact of a slowdown in the growth of e-commerce, a sector that drives much of its business. The June figure is also more than the free cash flow generated by Dutch publicly traded payments rival Adyen for the entire first half of the year.