Blackhawk Network Holdings Inc announced it will be sold to two private equity firms, Silver Lake and P2 Capital Partners, for around $3.5B in an all-cash transaction. Shareholders will receive $45.25 in cash per share. Shares, previously hovering in the $36 range, rose sharply on the news to the $45 range. The transaction is expected to close mid-2018.
Blackhawk is the parent company of Giftcardmall, Giftcards.com, Cardpool, and Cashstar. How will this affect us? Probably not at all, at least not the short term. I guess it’s possible private company administration will be more observant about cutting out non-profitable things (maybe portals?), but that’s not necessarily true, plus we don’t really know that any of our purchases aren’t profitable.
Wall Street was paying $1.50 more than the buyout price per share as of Tuesday, which means some think the current deal won’t go through. Speculation was that Thoma Bravo is discussing a higher bid for Blackhawk. If that were to happen, Blackhawk would become Incomm.
Hello Chuck,
I’ve been dealing with Cardpool for years. Please inform your readers that during the past several weeks, Cardpool has not been honoring refund requests for invalid cards purchased from the exchange. For years they’ve been responding almost immediately (within 24 hours) to bulk buyers’ refund requests, now they no longer even gratify emails to their support team with a response. They’ve turned off their bulk buyers’ phone line as well (1-800-240-6188) by playing an automated message that says they’re experiencing high call volume no matter when I’ve called in.
As many of your readers make purchases from Cardpool on a regular basis, I think it would be very valuable for them to know it’s now a buy-at-your-own-risk proposition.
Hmm, I’d need more data points before writing about such a thing. Did you try emailing the regular support?
I think the Cardpool issue may have something to do with the buyout of Blackhawk Network, which is why I posted the comment on this thread.
affect*
I’ll fix that
This might explain the cross-portal dollar limitation that’s been imposed.
I’m unfamiliar with this limitation, what is it?