SmartPay flirts with ASX listing

Monday 4th October 2010

SmartPay is considering listing on the ASX as part it is major push into the Australian market.

The company, through its Australian subsidiary, already has 12,000 terminals in the market with Bank of Bendigo and Live Group (TaxiEPay).

“In terms of growing the business, we will be putting significant emphasis into the Australian market making SmartPay a truly Australasian company,” said managing director Ian Bailey.

“An ASX listing is an appropriate and logical step.”

As part of its ongoing expansion across the Tasman, the company has entered into relationships with the Victorian Transport Ticketing Authority, and has signed cooperation agreements with lender Westpac and financial services company Suncorp.

“It is clear the Australian market is growing with significant niche opportunities for our core technologies and knowledge base,” Bailey said.

“In a market with 600,000 installed payment devices, we are confident that we can succeed. Our available product set is linked into banking and third party applications, where we already have strong relationships.”

SmartPay said an ASX listing would give SmartPay access to a much bigger capital market and a larger number of potential acquisition targets.

“We already have a number of opportunities for acquisition and organic growth that have been presented to us and we will continue to investigate these and others to identify ways of maximising value,” Bailey said.

“Ultimately this will increase the liquidity and diversity of SmartPay by introducing more shareholders on both sides of the Tasman.”

In August last year SmartPay quadrupled in size after the company acquired its competitor ProvencoCadmus, which had been placed in receivership due to unsustainable debt, lack of capital and poor trading in its core retail segment.

SmartPay stock was last trading at 3.4 cents, up from the 12-month low of 2.8 cents it fell to in July.

Businesswire.co.nz

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