Bankrate IPO
22nd June 2011
Apax Apax Partners ("Apax") has announced the successful IPO of Bankrate ("the Company"), an online personal finance portal, marking the start of the next phase of tApax Partners ("Apax") has announced the successful IPO of Bankrate ("the Company"), an online personal finance portal, marking the start of the next phase of the growth strategy for the business. Following the completion of the IPO, Apax Funds remain the majority shareholder with approximately 70% ownership of Bankrate's common stock.
New York, 22 June 2011
Apax Partners ("Apax") has announced the successful IPO of Bankrate ("the Company"), an online personal finance portal, marking the start of the next phase of the growth strategy for the business. Following the completion of the IPO, Apax Funds remain the majority shareholder with approximately 70% ownership of Bankrate's common stock.
The Company has emerged from the downturn with a leadership position across each of its core verticals, strengthened by numerous acquisitions, including CreditCards.com and Netquote.com in the second half of 2010. Apax Partners worked closely with management to identify, structure, negotiate and eventually integrate these two businesses that significantly expanded Bankrate's depth and breadth of offerings to consumers and advertisers alike.
Mitch Truwit, a partner at Apax, comments: "These acquisitions strengthened Bankrate's leadership position in online personal finance. They allowed Bankrate to achieve even greater scale and to further diversify its revenue streams, making it a great candidate for a return to the public markets -- particularly given the continuing appetite amongst investors for high-quality, high-growth Internet companies."
Apax Partners has been a meaningful investor in online sales and distribution platforms via its investments in Trader Media in the UK, SouFun in China and Trader Corporation in Canada. Amidst a cyclical downturn in financial services advertising, Apax Funds acquired Bankrate in August 2009 for $571 million in an all-equity investment. Following significant cutbacks in marketing budgets during the downturn, financial institutions have now refocused on brand promotion and customer acquisition, and Bankrate is well-positioned to strongly benefit from this recovery.
In the IPO, funds advised by Apax Partners indirectly sold 6,782,962 shares of the common stock of Bankrate, Inc. (NYSE: RATE) ("the Company"), in the Company's initial public offering of 20 million shares of common stock, which was priced at the mid-point of the range at $15.00 per share on June 16, 2011. Underwriters were also granted an option to acquire another 2,456,612 shares from these funds. Bankrate's shares began trading on June 17, 2011, on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "RATE". At the offer price of $15.00, Bankrate has a market capitalization of $1.5 billion.
Contacts:
Ben Harding
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7872 6401
Email: ben.harding@apax.com
Todd Fogarty
Tel: +1 212 521 4854
Email: todd-fogarty@kekst.com