TRM Corp., the nation's 10th-largest independent operator of automated teller machines, has entered the Canadian ATM market.
The Portland, Ore., company said June 15 that it had bought Mighty Cash Financial, which owned 73 ATM contracts in Canada, for cash. The price paid for the Vancouver Island company was not revealed.
TRM also runs 28,000 copying machines in retail stores in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Chief operating officer Tom Mann said the 27 employees who operate the 3,200 in Canada, where it has done business since 1990, are being trained to work on its newly acquired ATMs there, so no additional help will be needed.
Nonbanks own about 45% of the roughly 42,000 ATMs in Canada, said Sarah Feldman, a spokeswoman for the Interac Association, which runs the country's main debit and ATM network.
TRM owns and manages about 1,300 ATMs in this country and a little more than 3,000 in the United Kingdom. Until this year its growth in the business had been internal.
In April, however, it bought Inkas Financial Corp. Ltd., an independent ATM company with 450 locations in the United Kingdom; and all of ATM Plus' 20 ATMs, most of which are in West Coast shopping centers. (ATM Plus, of San Francisco, became an exclusive distributor of TRM machines.) Both deals were for cash, and the prices were not revealed.
Mr. Mann said the ATM Plus deal included TRM's first management contract for two bank-owned ATMs. He would not name the bank.
TRM also announced Wednesday that it had filed a registration statement to offer 4.5 million shares of stock plus an over-allotment option of up to 675,000 for underwriters. Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. Inc. is the lead managing underwriter.
