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.
