DALLAS Carreker Corp. said Tuesday that it plans to buy the payment processing firm Check Solutions Co. for $109.5 million and said separately that it will report lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings.
Carreker will finance the buyout of Memphis-based Check Solutions with $55 million of its own cash and $54.5 million borrowed from an unnamed third party. The deal is to close this quarter.
Check Solutions, founded in 1981, is a privately held company jointly owned by International Business Machines Corp. and First Tennessee Bank, the principal banking subsidiary of First Tennessee National Corp.
Carreker, which offers check processing software and consulting services, said it expects to report first-quarter earnings of about 6 cents a share on revenue of about $25 million. Analysts had been expecting it to post earnings of 11 to 19 cents a share, and the consensus expectation was 13 cents, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. The company is expected to issue its first-quarter results June 6.
While our market, the banking industry, is a strong market sector, it has not been immune to the well-documented softness in discretionary spending for information technology consulting services, said J.D. Denny Carreker, chairman and chief executive officer of Carreker.
For the year the company expects to post earnings of 88 cents a share and revenues of $145 million, figures that match analysts' current consensus estimates. It said the Check Solutions purchase should add about 7 cents a share to its 2001 earnings, excluding one-time costs of about $12 million, and should boost its 2002 profits by 15 cents to 20 cents a share.
