07:00 Tue 19 Nov 2019
Equals Group PLC - Acquisition of Casco Financial Services Limited
("Equals" or "the Group" or "the Company")
Acquisition of
Transaction expands Equals' B2B Payments Services business
Casco overview
Casco, which is regulated by the
Casco launched an additional product in 2017 - the provision of infrastructure services to the international payments sector. Through this Infrastructure Services platform, Casco offers a white-label product enabling other FX and payments companies to scale their businesses by utilising its technology, banking, liquidity and compliance capabilities.
For the last 12 calendar months to
The Acquisition will result in: -
1. A straightforward transfer of Casco's client base of over 1,000 corporate customers to the
2. Casco's Infrastructure Services Business, which represents a new product and revenue stream for the Group, being rebranded as "Equals Connect" operated under a separate subsidiary (the "Subsidiary")
Strategic rationale
The Acquisition is in accordance with three of the Group's stated strategies: to consolidate smaller, attractive market participants, expand its product range and leverage its investment into deeper payments connectivity.
As part of the payments connectivity strategy, since 2017 Equals has been focusing on supply-chain rationalisation. This has meant building out its platform to integrate deeper into payment networks and provide "connectivity" which, in turn, vastly improves customer experience (CX) and retention as well as yielding improved economics for the Group. The most recent example of this is Equals' direct connection to
Equals Connect will combine this investment in deep connectivity with the Casco platform to accelerate the Group into the B2B service provider industry.
The Board believes there is a substantial addressable market within this subsector of payment services and sees significant opportunities for well-positioned companies to capture market share.
The Board also notes that
Transaction details
The initial acquisition price of
The cash element of
The balance of
Two additional cash payments may be made over the next 2 years, conditional upon the payments services business achieving certain net revenue targets. Based on run-rate revenue and growth patterns, these payments would be expected to be approximately
The Company has applied for the Consideration Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM ("Admission"). It is expected that Admission will take place at
Concurrently with the Acquisition,
This announcement contains inside information.
For more information, please contact:
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+44 (0) 20 7778 9308 |
Cenkos Securities plc - Nominated Advisor and Joint Broker
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+44 (0) 20 7397 8900 |
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+44 (0) 20 7523 8150 |
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+44 (0) 7747 788 221 +44 (0) 7983 557 851 |
About Equals
Equals is a leading challenger brand in banking and payments that disintermediates the incumbent banks with a superior user experience and low-cost operating model. Our business enables personal and business customers to make easy, low-cost payments both domestically and in a broad range of currencies and across a range of products all via one integrated system. The Equals platform facilitates payments either direct to Bank Accounts or at 35 million merchants and over 1 million ATM's in a broad range of countries globally via Mobile apps, the Internet, SMS, wire transfer and MasterCard/
Equals provides money movement services to both personal and business customers through four channels: Currency Cards, Physical Currency, International Payments and Bank Accounts. The Currency Card and Physical Currency offerings facilitate multiple overseas payments at points of sale and ATM's whereas the International Payments channel supports wire transfer foreign exchange transactions direct to Bank Accounts. For Corporates, Equals has a market-leading business-expenses solution based around its corporate platform and prepaid card. This service can yield significant savings on a Corporate's expenses and procurement both domestically and overseas, through better controls and improved transparency. The platform also streamlines the downstream administrative processes and integrates into accounting software, thus saving costs. Equals offers retail and business bank accounts with all the functionality you would expect from a bank, namely faster payments, BACs, direct debits, international payments and a debit card.
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