August 4 (SeeNews) - Italian payment services provider Nexi SpA said it has signed a deal to buy a 51% stake in the merchant acquiring business of Greece's Alpha Bank [ATHEX:ALPHA] for 157 million euro ($132.2 million) in cash as part of a strategic partnership agreement.
Under the terms of the deal, Apha Bank will spin off its merchant acquiring business unit into a new entity and seek to obtain a payment institution licence for the new company, Nexi said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The agreed transaction implies a total enterprise value of 307 million euro for the new company. The terms of the deal also provide for a potential earn-out of up to 30.6 million euro subject to the achievement of certain financial performance milestones.
Nexi also said that upon completion, it would consolidate the new entity which is expected to contribute over 150,000 POS terminals and 9 billion euro of volumes. The new company which is yet to be named, is expected to generate about 93 million euro in revenue and 18 million euro of EBITDA in 2022.
Under the strategic partnership, Nexi and Alpha Bank are entering into a long-term distribution agreement, providing the new entity access to Alpha Bank’s network in order to distribute payment acceptance products and services to business customers of Alpha Bank in Greece.
"The partnership with Nexi is another major step in Alpha Bank’s ambition to form strategic alliances with the best global partners so as to provide solutions of the highest quality to our customers,” Alpha Bank CEO Vassilios Psaltis noted in the statement.
The deal with Nexi comes shortly after the Greek lender said at the end of July that it is seeking a strategic partner to establish a joint venture in the Greek real estate market. The intended transaction will be carried out through the bank’s listed real estate arm Alpha Astika Akinita SA, in which the potential partner will take a controlling stake.
($1=0.8421 euro)