According to a report in the Financial Times, the founder of Playtech, Teddy Sagi, who has recently sold off 10% of the company’s shares, plans to line up a new product for a $100 million I.P.O. in London. The largest project of the entrepreneur is a digital wallet called SafeCharge in which Sagi owns 90% stock.
The product that functions as an e-wallet or third party payment processor can be used in the online gambling sector as well as in the other e-commerce sectors. According to the company, it processes gambling bets at a speed of 300 transactions per second with great ease.
Furthermore, the report in the Financial Times reads that with this move Sagi’s stake would go down to 63% and that after floating SafeCharge’s market capitalization would be around GBP 210 million- 230 million. The report also notes that the company has gained main status with MasterCard and wishes to obtain similar status with Visa enabling it to act as acquirer for clients and being their payment processor.
Last year SafeCharge processed $5 billion in transactions and its earnings were up 31.4 percent on 2012 or $43.1 million in total. In 2014 it is forecasted that the company’s revenues would be $61.2 million.
SafeCharge, which was founded by present CEO David Avgi in 2006, predicts that the sport betting revenues would go up to 45 percent of overall sales, while the proportion of revenues from the UK would go up to 52 percent of all markets.
Last week the Israeli businessman Teddy Sagi put 10% of Playtech shares up for sale. The sale was comprised of 29.3m shares at a price of 725p for a share. Three companies, namely UBS, Canaccord Genuity and Shore Capital joined for the transaction that ends on Wednesday.