Payzone management in line for €2.5m windfall after ATM sale

Management at the payments company Payzone Group, including its chief executive Mike Maloney, will take a €2.5 million cash payment off the table after it sold its UK and German ATM units to a listed US firm for about €125 million.

Cardtronics, a Nasdaq-listed Texan company that provides ATM services, has bought the Irish company's Cardpoint Servcies subsidiary, which operates about 7,100 cash machines in retail outlets and garage forecourts across the UK under the Cashzone banner.

The deal also includes a further 800 ATMs in Germany, which operate under the Cardpoint name.

Mr Maloney said yesterday the proceeds of the sale would be used to pay down €58 million of senior bank debt, as well as well as a €64 million payment to its shareholders to wipe a series of loan notes. The €2.5 million for management will come from this payment.

The bulk of the cash will go to Duke Capital, the private equity group that took a 69 per cent stake in the business in 2010 following a debt restructuring.

Mr Maloney said none of the equity in the business was being “paid up” as part of the deal. “All of the shareholders are remaining on board,” he said.

The focus of Payzone, which was born from the boom-time merger between John Nagle’s Alphyra and Cardpoint in the UK, will now return to its payments business, Mr Maloney said.

“We have been expanding to provide different sorts of services to our customers,” said Mr Maloney of its payments division. It is involved in contracts such as the online collection of tolls for the M50, and the Leap Dublin city transport card.

Earlier this year Payzone was appointed an approved payment service provider by the Revenue Commissioners for the collection of cash payments of the local property tax.

Last month, the company reported a 47 per cent rise in operating profit to €2.9 million in the 12 months to the end of September 2012. Turnover for the period was down 5 per cent from €234.3 million in 2011 to €222.1 million last year.

Gross profit climbed to €8.5 million up from €7.3 million in the previous year.

Mr Maloney said the sale of the UK and German cash point businesses had been “driven” by its main shareholder, Duke.

“They have a classic three to five-year investment horizon,” said Mr Maloney.

He said that the payments business would also be sold “eventually” as Duke looked to exit in coming years, but that it was not talking to any potential suitors at the moment. “We don’t have any process underway at the moment for the payments business, although I would expect further shareholder change,” he said.

Payzone has had a tumultuous five years. The company employs about 600 staff across Europe, with about 100 located in its Sandyford head office in south Dublin.

Mr Nagle was ousted by a bitter boardroom struggle in 2008 involving the company's former majority shareholder Balderton Capital, whose partners include Mr Maloney's brother Barry Maloney.

Mike Maloney was appointed following the boardroom coup, and the business struggled through the recession. It neared the point of collapse in the spring of 2010, and was saved by a debt-for-equity swap that saw its lenders take a 16 per cent stake in return for writing off €211 million of debt.

Mr Maloney said that all employees in the businesses transferring to Cardtronics would be “looked after” in terms of their job security.

“I believe it is one of those deals where there is a good outcome for everybody.”

He said the transaction had taken nine months to agree with Cardtronics.