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| CheckFree Acquires HelioGraph to Become the Global Leader in Enterprise Financial Transaction Management |
ATLANTA and LONDON, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of HelioGraph Ltd., the Straight Through Processing (STP) and Financial Messaging leader. HelioGraph will be merged with CheckFree Financial and Compliance Solutions (CFACS), a business unit within CheckFree's Software Division. The acquisition of HelioGraph, a company with trailing twelve months revenue of approximately $8.0 million, reflects CheckFree's commitment to grow its software business and strengthens its international presence. CFACS recently announced the opening of a London office to directly market the CheckFree RECON-Plus Frontier(TM) solution internationally, and senior STP and financial services veterans have been recruited to support that strategy. The combined product suite will position CFACS to deliver a comprehensive, global enterprise Financial Transaction Management solution. HelioGraph provides a suite of financial messaging, transaction management, corporate actions, and trade status tracking solutions, all of which incorporate its SWIFTReady Gold-accredited core integration technology. The addition of these components to CheckFree's market-leading enterprise reconciliation and matching platform will enable companies to realize more streamlined and efficient international transaction settlements, centralized information and exception management as well as greater risk management capabilities across global operations. The technology leadership of CFACS and HelioGraph is confirmed by recent industry analyst reports. Celent Communications ranked RECON-Plus Frontier as the top reconciliation solution[1], and a series of CityCompass corporate actions benchmark tests by an independent user panel gave HelioGraph's solution its highest rating among vendors[2]. CFACS and HelioGraph boast a combined customer list of nearly 600 top-tier global companies in the banking, securities, insurance and retail industries. Several of these companies have implemented CheckFree and HelioGraph solutions together, demonstrating both real-world business demand for the joint solution and compatibility of the software platforms. "With the addition of HelioGraph, CFACS brings to market a comprehensive Financial Transaction Management solution that delivers new levels of global processing efficiency and control," said Sean Feeney, executive vice president and general manager of CheckFree's Software Division. "With a single provider, companies can manage the end-to-end transaction lifecycle to track trade status, confirm transaction settlement, reconcile transactions, manage exceptions and risk and provide real-time reporting. The new solution not only addresses straight through processing, but other crucial business issues, such as business process optimization and risk management." "In CheckFree we recognized an organization with which we share common business ethics, goals and focus on quality," said Amery Thomas, CEO of HelioGraph. "Together we can offer the financial services community a solution that is greater than the sum of its parts - moving beyond reconciliation and financial messaging to support full global financial operations control." "The combination of CFACS and HelioGraph will extend our joint leadership position by enabling us to deliver new levels of seamless processing unmatched in the market today," said Mark Zill, senior vice president and general manager of CFACS. "This equates to an unparalleled value proposition and the highest caliber service for our customers." Terms of the Agreement CheckFree will purchase all of the outstanding shares of HelioGraph for $18.3 million in cash. For the quarter ended December 31, 2003, Heliograph is expected to contribute revenue of about $1.0 million to CheckFree, be dilutive to GAAP earnings of about $0.01 per share, and have a minimal impact on underlying earnings per share. For the full year, Heliograph is expected to have a minimal impact on GAAP and underlying earnings per share. HelioGraph's management team, base of 50 employees, and offices in London will remain with the Company. About HelioGraph Founded in 1996, HelioGraph is leading the market in supplying Transaction Process Management (TPM) tools for the securities industry. HelioGraph's flagship TradeFlow TPM product allows its customers to manage, measure, and monitor critical business processes, identifying and reducing operational risk across disparate systems and protocols using trusted data, integrated systems, and harmonized processes, using a single user interface. As the only single-architecture transaction process management solution on the market, TradeFlow TPM supports industry-standard business and technical TPM Packs including SWIFT, institutional ETC and ETS, and Omgeo CTM. HelioGraph's eVent product applies the TPM approach to corporate actions management and STP from data capture to settlement. Fully ISO15022 enabled, eVent's proven and tested workflow and exception management is available to asset managers, investment banks and custodians. All HelioGraph products incorporate its core integration technology; the SWIFTReady Gold accredited HelioGraph Message Broker(R), with its component- based data field dictionary architecture. With offices in New York, London and Singapore, HelioGraph has global representation and an international client-base, including Bank of America, Citicorp, Commerzbank, FXall, Mellon Corp, Deutsche Bank, MFS Investment Management, Northern Trust and State Street. For further information, visit http://www.heliograph-global.com About CheckFree ( http://www.checkfreecorp.com ) CheckFree (Nasdaq: CKFR) is the leading provider of financial electronic commerce services and products. Founded in 1981 and celebrating its 23rd year in e-commerce, CheckFree is comprised of three divisions: Electronic Commerce, Software, and Investment Services. CheckFree launched the first fully integrated electronic billing and payment solution in 1997. In the quarter ended September 30, 2003, more than 11 million consumers initiated online payments through services offered by CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division. Electronic billing and payment is available through more than a thousand financial services organizations, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet portals and personal financial management (PFM) software. At these sites, consumers are able to electronically receive and pay about 300 bills, representing the bills most common to a U.S. household. CheckFree delivers nearly 15 million e-bills each quarter. CheckFree Investment Services provides a broad range of investment management services to thousands of financial institutions nationwide. The division's clients manage more than 1.3 million portfolios totaling more than $700 billion in assets. CheckFree's Software division provides solutions through three operating units: CheckFree ACH Solutions, CheckFree Financial and Compliance Solutions (CFACS), and CheckFree i-Solutions. CheckFree ACH Solutions provides software and services that are used to process more than two-thirds of the nation's nine billion Automated Clearing House payments, while CFACS provides reconciliation and compliance software and services to more than 500 organizations in the banking, brokerage, utility, retail, insurance and credit card industries, among others. CheckFree i-Solutions is the leading provider of e-billing and e-statement software and services for both business-to- consumer and business-to-business applications, with more billers as clients than all of its competitors have combined. Certain of the Company's statements in this press release are not purely historical, and as such are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include statements regarding management's intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or projections of the future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the various risks inherent in the Company's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Company's Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2003 (filed September 15, 2003) and Form 8-K (filed October 21, 2003). There can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made in this document will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that the objectives and plans of the Company will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are based on information presently available to management, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. [1] "Ranking the Vendors of Reconciliation Systems," by Celent Communications, a Boston-based research and advisory firm. September 2003. This is an overview of the reconciliation process in addition to analyzing and ranking thirteen major vendors' solutions. For more information or a copy of the report contact Fleur Sohtz at 212-490-2229 or via e-mail fsohtz@celent.com [2] "B.I.S.S. Benchmarking Corporate Actions 2003," by CityCompass. June 2003. HelioGraph achieved the highest rating in several of a series of corporate actions benchmark tests set by an independent user panel, representing major global players. For more information visit http://www.citycompass.orgSOURCE CheckFree Corporation
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