First Data leads the IPO way

The company says that it is looking to raise USD 100 million in its offering, vator.tv reports. First Data runs a debit-card network and processes bank-card transactions for banks and merchants. It offers three business lines.

The first is its Global Business Solutions (GBS), which provides retail point-of-sale merchant acquiring and ecommerce services as well as mobile payment services, webstore-in-a-box solutions, and its cloud-based Clover point-of-sale operating system, which includes a marketplace for proprietary and third-party business apps.

First Datas Global Financial Solutions (GFS) provides credit solutions for bank and non-bank issuers. These include credit and retail private-label card processing, as well as licensed financial software systems. Finally, its Network & Security Solutions provide electronic funds transfer network solutions, value network solutions and security and fraud solutions.

First Data serves clients in 118 countries, reaching approximately 6 million business locations and over 4,000 financial institutions. In 2014, the company processed 74 billion transactions globally, or over 2,300 per second, and processed 28% of the world’s ecommerce volume. In its largest market, the US, it acquired USD 1.7 trillion of payment volume, accounting for nearly 10% of US GDP in 2014.

First Data saw USD 11.2 billion in 2014 revenue, up from USD 10.8 billion in 2013 and USD 10.6 billion in 2-2012. It is also seeing declining losses, seeing a net loss of USD 265 million in 2014, down from USD 692 million in 2013. In Q1, 2015, First Data has seen $2.7 billion in revenue, on a loss of $63 million.

The US IPO market started out slow in 2015. With 34 IPOs raising USD 5.4 billion, Q1 2015 turned out to be the least active quarter by IPO count since Q1, 2013, and the smallest by proceeds raised since the Q3, 2011. To compare: Q1 2014 saw 64 deals, and USD 10.6 billion raised. The only major tech IPO of Q1 was cloud storage company Box.

Q2, 2015 was much stronger, going up 83% in volume and 111% in proceeds raised, compared to Q1, 20152015, according to PwC. There were 75 IPOs completed in Q2, 2015 which raised more than USD 13 billion.