Updates

Optimal Payments - Buying rival Skrill

April 2015

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

We had expected in last month’s update that an acquisition was imminent but chief executive Joel Leonoff has hit the ball out of the park by announcing it is buying Skrill, its main rival on the e-wallets side, for €1.2bn enterprise value. The deal is so large as to make it a reverse takeover and the consideration is to be settled by way of US$781m cash and 37m new shares equivalent to US$146m (an 8% stake) to the vendors. The remainder is assumed in debt (which rises to US$550m). To pay for the deal Optimal has announced a rights issue at 166p on a 5-for-3 basis to raise £451m.On-going cost saving synergies of US$40m are expected and based on this Optimal says it is buying the business on just 9.3x ebitda. The dea ...

To access our archive of articles and to receive current issues you need to subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber? Login

EMIS - 75% of revenues repeat

Tungsten

Optimal Payments - Skrill trading ahead of expectations (September 2015)

Optimal Payments - Meeting notes (March 2015)

Optimal Payments - Profits in-line with increased forecasts (February 2015)

Optimal Payments - Strong H1 trading continues into H2 (December 2014)

Optimal Payments - Third forecast upgrade since June - new high - gain now 557% (October 2014)

Optimal Payments - 29% upgrade to 2015 forecast (July 2014)

Optimal Payments - Profits "materially ahead" (June 2014)

Optimal Payments (April 2014)

Optimal Payments - Trading ahead of expectations (February 2014)

Optimal Payments (December 2013)

Optimal Payments (October 2013)

Optimal Payments - Will achieve 2015 forecast this year (June 2013)

Optimal Payments - Neteller e-wallet 2,000 new users a day (April 2013)

Optimal Payments - Three states legalise online gaming (March 2013)

Optimal Payments - Shares go into orbit (February 2013)

Optimal Payments (January 2013)

Optimal Payments - July and August trading set records (October 2012)

Optimal Payments - US to legalise online gaming on a state-by-state basis (September 2012)

With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

All material on this website is protected by copyright. You may use Information retrieved from the www.scsw.co.uk website for your own personal non-commercial use which means that you may not sell or copy this information to any third party without prior written consent. ISSN 1358-183X