Italian payment firm Nexi and SIA have agreed a merger, creating an at-scale player encompassing the entire payments value chain.
The transaction will create a European champion in digital payments, with €1.8 billion pro-forma aggregated revenues and €1 billion Ebitda as of December 31st, 2019.
SIA is indirectly controlled by the Italian state through Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), which will own around a quarter of the new group.
The all-share deal gives SIA an equity value of €4.6 billion and will hand Nexi about 70% of the merged company.
The combined company will be the largest in Continental Europe by number of merchants, by number of cards, by number of acquiring transactions and number of cross-border payment transactions, with ~2 million merchants, ~120 million cards, and an overall number of processed annual transactions equal to more than 21 billion. It will have a workforce of 5.5 thousand individuals in 15 countries.
Nexi CEO, Paolo Bertoluzzo, comments: “This transaction will create a large Italian PayTech company leader in Europe, a great technological and digital excellence with scale and capabilities to play an increasingly leading role in Italy and at an international level in a market, like the European one, that sees strong consolidation trends."
Bertoluzzo will take on the role of CEO and general manager of the new entity, while the current CEO of SIA, Nicola Cordone, will move on to pastures new following completion of the merger.
The combined group has a valuation of €15 billion and a pro-forma adjusted core profit of €1 billion, realising €150 million in run-rate recurring synergies and a one-off capex saving of €65 million.