Privately owned, Atlanta-based payment processing giant First Data Corp. is planning to go public, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company is owned by KKR Inc., a fund that took the company private in 2007 in a $26 billion leveraged buyout, according to the Wall Street Journal.
First Data has yet to choose a bank to handle the offering or announce the number or price of shares to be offered. The company has lost money in each of the last three years, but has been cutting its losses under CEO Frank Bisignano, who arrived in 2013. The company still has an estimated $20.6 billion in outstanding debt but posted its first quarterly profit in seven years in February, the journal reported.
Posting $11.2 billion in revenues last year, First Data recently announced the formation of an international advisory board to provide insight on its global expansion.
The company is also diversifying beyond credit-card transactions, of which it processes trillions of dollars in value each year. First Data last year bought Gyft Inc., a digital prepaid gift card provider, and this month acquired Transaction Wireless Inc., which provides the back end system for digital gift card transactions. Prepaid is the fastest growing sector in the electronic payments industry, according to industry statistics.