Banking, finance, and taxes

First Data Prepares for IPO

First Data Corp. has filed an amended S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its initial public offering (IPO). No terms were given in the filing, but the offering is valued up to $100 million, though this number is usually just a placeholder. The company has yet to decide what exchange it will list on or even what symbol to list under.

The underwriters for the offering are Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, KKR, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Mizuho Securities, PNC Capital Markets, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Wells Fargo, Allen & Co. and BBVA.

This company sits at the center of global electronic commerce. It covers customer needs across next-generation commerce technologies, merchant acquiring, issuing and network solutions. First Data serves clients in 118 countries, reaching approximately 6 million business locations and over 4,000 financial institutions.

According to the company, it has the industry’s largest distribution network, driven by partnerships with many of the world’s leading financial institutions, its direct sales force and a network of distribution partners. At the same time it believes that it is the largest merchant acquirer, issuer processor and independent network services provider in the world, enabling businesses to accept electronic payments, helping financial institutions issue credit, debit and prepaid cards, and routing secure transactions between them.

In 2014, First Data processed 74 billion transactions globally — over 2,300 per second — and processed 28% of the world’s e-commerce volume. In its largest market, the United States, the company acquired $1.7 trillion of payment volume, accounting for nearly 10% of U.S. gross domestic product last year.

In the filing, First Data detailed its finances:

In 2014, we generated $11.2 billion of revenue, $1.4 billion of operating profit, and had a net loss attributable to First Data of $458 million, reflecting an increase of 3%, 28% and 52% (decrease of loss), respectively, over 2013. For the same period, we generated segment revenues (which exclude reimbursable fees and other items) of $6.9 billion, Adjusted EBITDA of $2.7 billion, and Adjusted Net Income of $423 million, reflecting an increase of 3%, 9% and 392%, respectively, over 2013.

The company intends to use the proceeds from this offering for the repayment of certain indebtedness.
Also worth noting is that after the completion of this offering, affiliates of KKR will continue to control a majority of the voting power of the common stock. As a result, it will be a “controlled company” within the meaning of the corporate governance standards of the applicable stock exchange.

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