CheckFree Acquires HelioGraph To Become the Global Leader in Enterprise Financial Transaction Management
November 03 2003 - 7:00AM
PR Newswire (US)
CheckFree Acquires HelioGraph To Become the Global Leader in
Enterprise Financial Transaction Management ATLANTA and LONDON,
Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CheckFree Corporation today
announced that it has completed the acquisition of HelioGraph Ltd.,
the Straight Through Processing (STP) and Financial Messaging
leader. HelioGraph will be merged with CheckFree Financial and
Compliance Solutions (CFACS), a business unit within CheckFree's
Software Division. The acquisition of HelioGraph, a company with
trailing twelve months revenue of approximately $8.0 million,
reflects CheckFree's commitment to grow its software business and
strengthens its international presence. CFACS recently announced
the opening of a London office to directly market the CheckFree
RECON-Plus Frontier(TM) solution internationally, and senior STP
and financial services veterans have been recruited to support that
strategy. The combined product suite will position CFACS to deliver
a comprehensive, global enterprise Financial Transaction Management
solution. HelioGraph provides a suite of financial messaging,
transaction management, corporate actions, and trade status
tracking solutions, all of which incorporate its SWIFTReady
Gold-accredited core integration technology. The addition of these
components to CheckFree's market-leading enterprise reconciliation
and matching platform will enable companies to realize more
streamlined and efficient international transaction settlements,
centralized information and exception management as well as greater
risk management capabilities across global operations. The
technology leadership of CFACS and HelioGraph is confirmed by
recent industry analyst reports. Celent Communications ranked
RECON-Plus Frontier as the top reconciliation solution[1], and a
series of CityCompass corporate actions benchmark tests by an
independent user panel gave HelioGraph's solution its highest
rating among vendors[2]. CFACS and HelioGraph boast a combined
customer list of nearly 600 top-tier global companies in the
banking, securities, insurance and retail industries. Several of
these companies have implemented CheckFree and HelioGraph solutions
together, demonstrating both real-world business demand for the
joint solution and compatibility of the software platforms. "With
the addition of HelioGraph, CFACS brings to market a comprehensive
Financial Transaction Management solution that delivers new levels
of global processing efficiency and control," said Sean Feeney,
executive vice president and general manager of CheckFree's
Software Division. "With a single provider, companies can manage
the end-to-end transaction lifecycle to track trade status, confirm
transaction settlement, reconcile transactions, manage exceptions
and risk and provide real-time reporting. The new solution not only
addresses straight through processing, but other crucial business
issues, such as business process optimization and risk management."
"In CheckFree we recognized an organization with which we share
common business ethics, goals and focus on quality," said Amery
Thomas, CEO of HelioGraph. "Together we can offer the financial
services community a solution that is greater than the sum of its
parts - moving beyond reconciliation and financial messaging to
support full global financial operations control." "The combination
of CFACS and HelioGraph will extend our joint leadership position
by enabling us to deliver new levels of seamless processing
unmatched in the market today," said Mark Zill, senior vice
president and general manager of CFACS. "This equates to an
unparalleled value proposition and the highest caliber service for
our customers." Terms of the Agreement CheckFree will purchase all
of the outstanding shares of HelioGraph for $18.3 million in cash.
For the quarter ended December 31, 2003, Heliograph is expected to
contribute revenue of about $1.0 million to CheckFree, be dilutive
to GAAP earnings of about $0.01 per share, and have a minimal
impact on underlying earnings per share. For the full year,
Heliograph is expected to have a minimal impact on GAAP and
underlying earnings per share. HelioGraph's management team, base
of 50 employees, and offices in London will remain with the
Company. About HelioGraph HelioGraph provides best-of-breed STP
products and services to the global financial community, allowing
its clients to reduce risk and manage complex information flows.
HelioGraph's state-of-the-art solutions offer a single platform for
end-to-end STP, encompassing connectivity, messaging, workflow and
exception handling. HelioGraph's products include Helio TradeFlow,
an STP platform which automates the entire post-trade process
through to settlement and includes connectivity options to VMUs
like Omgeo CTM; and eVent, the first solution for end-to-end global
corporate actions automation. All HelioGraph products incorporate
its core integration technology; the SWIFTReady Gold accredited
Helio Message Broker(R), with its component-based, data field
dictionary architecture. With offices in London, HelioGraph has
global representation and an international client-base, including
ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Commerze, FXall, Deutsche Asset
Management, Gartmore, Julius Baer, Northern Trust, State Street,
MFS Investment Management and WestLB Panmure. For further
information, visit http://www.heliograph-global.com/. About
CheckFree (http://www.checkfreecorp.com/) CheckFree (NASDAQ:CKFR)
is the leading provider of financial electronic commerce services
and products. Founded in 1981 and celebrating its 23rd year in
e-commerce, CheckFree is comprised of three divisions: Electronic
Commerce, Software, and Investment Services. CheckFree launched the
first fully integrated electronic billing and payment solution in
1997. In the quarter ended September 30, 2003, more than 11 million
consumers initiated online payments through services offered by
CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division. Electronic billing and
payment is available through more than a thousand financial
services organizations, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet
portals and personal financial management (PFM) software. At these
sites, consumers are able to electronically receive and pay about
300 bills, representing the bills most common to a U.S. household.
CheckFree delivers nearly 15 million e-bills each quarter.
CheckFree Investment Services provides a broad range of investment
management services to thousands of financial institutions
nationwide. The division's clients manage more than 1.3 million
portfolios totaling more than $700 billion in assets. CheckFree's
Software division provides solutions through three operating units:
CheckFree ACH Solutions, CheckFree Financial and Compliance
Solutions (CFACS), and CheckFree i-Solutions. CheckFree ACH
Solutions provides software and services that are used to process
more than two-thirds of the nation's nine billion Automated
Clearing House payments, while CFACS provides reconciliation and
compliance software and services to more than 500 organizations in
the banking, brokerage, utility, retail, insurance and credit card
industries, among others. CheckFree i-Solutions is the leading
provider of e-billing and e-statement software and services for
both business-to- consumer and business-to-business applications,
with more billers as clients than all of its competitors have
combined. Certain of the Company's statements in this press release
are not purely historical, and as such are "forward-looking
statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. These include statements regarding management's
intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or projections of the
future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties,
including without limitation, the various risks inherent in the
Company's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from
time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission, including Company's Form 10-K
for the year ended June 30, 2003 (filed September 15, 2003) and
Form 8-K (filed October 21, 2003). There can be no assurance that
the forward-looking statements made in this document will prove to
be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should
not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other
person, that the objectives and plans of the Company will be
achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release
are based on information presently available to management, and the
Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking
statements. [1] "Ranking the Vendors of Reconciliation Systems," by
Celent Communications, a Boston-based research and advisory firm.
September 2003. This is an overview of the reconciliation process
in addition to analyzing and ranking thirteen major vendors'
solutions. For more information or a copy of the report contact
Fleur Sohtz at 212-490-2229 or via e-mail [2] "B.I.S.S.
Benchmarking Corporate Actions 2003," by CityCompass. June 2003.
HelioGraph achieved the highest rating in several of a series of
corporate actions benchmark tests set by an independent user panel,
representing major global players. For more information visit
http://www.citycompass.org/ DATASOURCE: CheckFree Corporation
CONTACT: Media, Judy DeRango Wicks, +1-678-375-1595, , or
Investors, Tina Moore, +1-678-375-1278, , both of CheckFree Web
site: http://www.checkfreecorp.com/
http://www.heliograph-global.com/ Company News On-Call:
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/110744.html
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