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TickerWU
SectorFinancial - Credit Services
Mkt cap$2.8B
EV / EBITDA2.2×
PostureHigh Velocity
Composite70/100
LensBuyer-side
SE-Cluster Research·Issuer Brief·Q2 2026CIK 1365135

Western Union CO

WUHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITY

Western Union CO reads as an High Velocity (composite 70/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $0 across 0 disclosed transactions, running flat vs the prior cycle · primary market Financial Infrastructure.

Lens

Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)

N/A

flat

vs N/A in 2020–2022

Disclosed transactions

N/A

flat

0/3 active fiscal years in window

Buyer archetype

Consistent Strategic Buyer

Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.

Composite score

70

/100

High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity

Financial snapshot
Revenue$4B
EBITDA$883M
Enterprise value$1.9B
EV / Revenue0.5×
EV / EBITDA2.2×
P/EN/A
Cash$909M
Total debt$2.3B
as of 2026-05-10
§ I·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Behavioral posture, nine reads.

Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.

Active Acquirer

47/100

Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A

  • $1.9B disclosed buyer spend

Buyer Cadence

37/100

Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity

  • Filed within 36d
  • 221 8-Ks

Target Probability

4/100

Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings

Spin/Carve

0/100

Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture

Pressure Watch

14/100

Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure

Distress Watch

0/100

Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns

Restatement Risk

0/100

Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings

Capital Velocity

Dominant
70/100

Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity

  • 221 8-Ks
  • 4 form types

Quiet Power

41/100

Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence

  • Enterprise value $1.9B
  • 10-Q 47d ago
  • 2 active signals
§ II·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Capital cadence.

Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $25M · Peak count: 1

FYDisclosed buysDisclosed spendAvg ticketAudited tier
2025N/AN/AN/AN/A
2024N/AN/AN/AN/A
2023N/AN/AN/AN/A
2022N/AN/AN/AN/A
2021N/AN/AN/AN/A
2020N/AN/AN/AN/A
§ III·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Strategy posture.

The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.

Archetype mix

  • Geographic Expansion
    25%
  • Horizontal Consolidation
    25%
  • Tuck In
    25%
  • Bolt On
    25%

Strategy keywords

Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.

  • geographic_expansion
  • horizontal_consolidation
  • bolt_on
  • tuck_in
§ IV·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing language.

Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.

International expansion and other key strategic initiatives, including TGBP, have resulted in international revenue continuing to increase in this segment.

10-KFY2011

In November 2011, we acquired the business-to-business payment business of Travelex Holdings Limited, known as Travelex Global Business Payments (“TGBP”).

10-KFY2011

We are in the process of consolidating all of these services, in addition to our Quick Collect service

10-KFY2012

wallets, informal remittance systems, automated teller machine providers and operators, phone payment systems (including mobile phone networks), postal organizations, retailers, check cashers, mail and courier services, currency exchanges, and digital currencies, including cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges. These services are differentiated by features and functionalities such as brand recognition, customer service, trust and reliability, distribution network and channel options, convenience, price, speed, variety of payment methods, service offerings and innovation. Our business, distribution network and channel options, such as our digital channels, have been and may continue to be impacted by increased competition, including from new competitors and the consolidation of competitors and the expansion of their services, which could adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows. For example, we have experienced increased competition in money transfers sent and received within the United States from competitors that do not charge a fee to send or receive money through bank accounts. The potential international expansion of these competitors could represent significant competition to us.

10-KFY2024

Western Union Payments service allows consumers to send funds to businesses and government agencies

10-KFY2012
§ V·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Market context.

Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.

Primary market

Financial Infrastructure

Market spend (2023–2025)
$186.1B
Market spend (2020–2022)
$98.1B
Recent vs prior
+90%
Issuer rank in market
N/A
Share of market capital
0.0%

Valuation positioning

2.2×EV / EBITDA

WU trades at a -14.0-turn discount to the Financial Infrastructure peer median of 16.2×.

EV / Revenue
0.5×
Net debt / EBITDA
1.6×
Peer median EV / EBITDA
16.2×

Trading comparables

FMP market data · 2026-05-10

CompanyEV / EBITDAEV / RevNet debt / EBITDARevenueM&A 2023–2025
22.0×14.5×-0.4×$43B$1.8B
21.4×10.8×1.4×$7.9B$451M
16.2×8.2×3.2×$13.1B$10.3B
10.9×3.9×5.4×$8.8B$5.1B
2.3×2.7×-1.1×$187B$81.8B
Western Union COWU
2.2×0.5×1.6×$4BN/A

Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Financial Infrastructure. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.

§ VI·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Target landscape.

Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.

No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.

Stated target categories

No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.

§ VII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing activity & signal stream.

Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.

Filing cadence

  • 10-K (annual)202026-02-20
  • 10-Q (quarterly)592026-04-24
  • 8-K (event)2212026-05-05
  • Proxy / DEF 14A432026-04-28
  • Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A

Signals on file

  • info

    Signal

    Serial acquisition history

  • info

    Signal

    10-K strategy themes

§ VIII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Audited corpus.

No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.

This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.