Cardtronics Selects Steven Rathgaber As CEO; He Is Scheduled To Begin Feb. 1.

Cardtronics Inc., which named Steven A. Rathgaber its new CEO Monday, paid him a $200,000 one-time signing bonus to lead the world’s largest ATM independent sales organization, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Cardtronics also agreed to pay Rathgaber $525,000 annual salary, and he will receive annual bonus that amounts to half his base salary if the Houston-based company meets financial targets established by the board of directors, according to the SEC filing. In addition, the company awarded the 56-year-old Rathgaber 350,000 shares of restricted stock.
Rathgaber, president and chief operating officer of NYCE Payments Network LLC since 2004, will join Cardtronics Feb.1, Cardtronics executives said.
Rathgaber, who also was elected to the company’s board of directors, replaces Jack M. Antonini as CEO. Antonini left Cardtronics in March. Fred R. Lummis, Cardtronics chairman, has served as acting CEO as the company searched for Antonini’s replacement.
Rathgaber has 32 years of experience in the payments industry, including 18 at
NYCE, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Fidelity National Information Services Inc. NYCE, one of the nation’s large EFT networks, is based in Secaucus, N.J.
“The opportunity to join Cardtronics at this point in the company’s evolution was one I could not pass up,” Rathgaber said in a statement.
ATM&Debit News learned that Cardtronics approached Rathgaber about the job, and he is moving to Houston to run the company.
His selection is a good news for Cardtronics, Franco Turrinelli, an analyst with Chicago-based William Blair& Co., wrote Tuesday in an analyst’s report.  
“We believe Mr. Rathgaber brings the needed industry experience and knowledge to lead the company with its efforts to evolve it products and services to leverage its existing network and relationships with large financial institutions and retailers to provide additional growth opportunities,” Turrinelli wrote.
Cardtronics took its time before deciding on Rathgaber.
“After an extremely thorough search process, we found an outstanding leader with a sustained track record of exceeding established and operational and financial goals,” Lummis said in a statement.
Cardtronics’s selection process became more difficult as the company began to turn a profit, Lummis told analysts during a third-quarter conference call.
“Our existing management team keeps raising the bar through their own performance, and the board just won’t settle for second best,” Lummis said. Cardtronics reported a $6.52 million profit for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, which followed a $2.6 million profit for the previous three-month period. Before than, the last time Cardtronics reported a profit was the fourth-quarter of 2006.
Cardtronics operates or managed 32,995 ATMs in the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The company also owns Bethesda, Md.-based Allpoint, the nation’s largest surcharge-free ATM network, with 37,500 machines worldwide.