Blockchain Revolution Series: French Fintech Firms In M&A Deal To Optimize Payment Services

The French Fintech firms, ‘Ingenico and Worldline’ who are in the payments service business, have made the latest announcement about their intentions for a merger deal. Wordline is going to acquire Ingenico business for worth around $8.6 billion.

Well, Ingenico has been the global leader in seamless payment, providing smart, trusted, global ecommerce solutions, while Worldline is the renowned financial services company with wide ranges of products within the various industries; Ingenico creates point-of-sale terminals that account for 37% of the global market.

The deal is to be finalized in the Q3 of this year. The Chairman and CEO of Worldline, Gilles Grapinet, is steering and take forward the amalgamated business, with expected employee capacity of 20,000 members across 50 countries.

He further said, “I am proud to announce that today is a great day for Worldline and for Ingenico, and more widely for our Payment industry: Together we create the European World-Class leader in digital payments.

We deeply respect Ingenico and its team for the deep business repositioning of their company realized over the last years into one of the largest European Payment Service Providers with outstanding global positions in Online Payments and Merchant Acquiring. We have been impressed by the strong improvement in performance realized over the last 18 months under the leadership of Nicolas Huss, as well as by the in-depth transformation initiated at the same time of their global leading payment terminal business, resulting in increased efficiency, more autonomy and a new strategic roadmap.

I am convinced that the combination of our respective remarkable talents pools, joint capabilities and state-of-the art offers will procure our combined Company an outstanding value proposition to pursue an exceptional growth benefitting to all our clients, banks and merchants alike and to all our business partners. This is a landmark transaction for the industrial consolidation of European payments, highly value creative for all our stakeholders and for the shareholders of both companies, and which ambitions to reinforce the role of Europe within the global digital payment ecosystem.”

We’ve listed out other highlights of the valuations of the deal:

The strong value creation is expected out of this deal with an estimated c.€ 250 million run-rate synergies in 2024 and generate an enhanced financial profile with the accelerated OMDA growth contemplating the synergies and operational gearing and lures to create with the double digit EPS accretion swiftly.

Most importantly, the strong integration capability through proven integration track-record of Worldline securing synergy delivery.

Under the terms of the transaction, to be implemented through a tender offer, Ingenico shareholders would receive 11 Worldline shares and € 160.5 in cash for 7 Ingenico shares, with a mix and match mechanism, 24% premium based on the last one-month volume weighted average share price. Implied Ingenico equity value of € 7.8 billion and a 2020E EV/EBITDA multiple of c. 15x based on guidance. Post transaction, Ingenico shareholders to own a 35% stake in the combined group.