(COMTEX) B: CHECKFREE TO ACQUIRE BLUEGILL TECHNOLOGIES LEADERS IN ELE
B: CHECKFREE TO ACQUIRE BLUEGILL TECHNOLOGIES LEADERS IN ELECTRONIC BILLING AND
PAYMENT WILL JOIN TO ACCELERATE THE AVAILABILITY OF BILLS on the Internet
ATLANTA, Dec 21, 1999 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- CheckFree Holdings
(Nasdaq: CKFR), the leader in electronic billing and payment, announced
today that it will acquire BlueGill Technologies, the leading provider
of Internet billing and statement creation software applications, for
shares of CheckFree's Common Stock. The move strategically extends
CheckFree's market position by adding BlueGill's open standards-based
biller software products, experience in creating both
business-to-consumer and business-to-business software solutions for
the Internet, Value-Added-Reseller partnership network, and
international reach to CheckFree's market-leading electronic billing
and payment infrastructure and distribution network.
Together CheckFree and BlueGill will offer to billers, banks, Internet
portals and business partners a broad solution that encompasses all of
the components of electronic billing and payment. By simplifying the
process of selecting and deploying an electronic billing and payment
solution, CheckFree and BlueGill hope to accelerate billers' abilities
to get Internet-based billing content to market quickly, which will
entice consumers to sign up for the services. The components of the
electronic billing and payment process include:
-- creating an electronic bill from data stored in systems designed to
generate paper bills;
-- making electronic bills available on the Internet at the biller's Web
site, and at Web sites hosted by a variety of financial services
information and transaction providers, including financial
institutions, brokerage firms, service bureaus such as billserv.com and
Internet portals such as Yahoo! Finance and Intuit's Quicken.com
enabling consumers to view, interact with and pay the bill;
-- managing the payment process between consumers' checking accounts and
billers' accounts receivable systems; and
-- providing event tracking and customer service and support for each of
these steps.
Jim Dixon, group executive, operations and technology, for Bank of
America Corporation, said combining the components of electronic
billing and payment is a positive move. "The combination of CheckFree
and BlueGill clarifies that there are component parts to achieving the
presentment and payment of bills electronically," Dixon said. "This
clarity is beneficial to the marketplace. The combination of these two
companies provides direction as to where billers can go for solutions,
which should accelerate getting electronic billing content to market.
This will, in turn, heighten consumer interest in the service through
financial institutions such as Bank of America," Dixon concluded.
Advancement in Interoperability CheckFree president and chief operating
officer Pete Sinisgalli said that CheckFree chose to acquire BlueGill
Technologies after an extensive evaluation of biller software server
providers that included detailed reviews of both existing technology
and market vision. He said that among the reasons CheckFree chose
BlueGill Technologies were an infrastructure that has proven
scalability, and a technology vision that supports interoperability.
"BlueGill introduced the first software system developed using
Extensible Markup Language, or XML, and has been perfecting it for more
than two years," Sinisgalli said. "That is important, because XML is
generally acknowledged to be the standard for describing data exchanged
over the Internet. XML enables businesses to share information broadly
and efficiently, and will accelerate the adoption of data exchange over
the Internet, much as Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, advanced the
adoption of data presentation over the Internet. Data exchange over the
Internet in an interoperable fashion is at the heart of the promise of
electronic billing and payment," Sinisgalli said.
Avivah Litan, Interactive Financial Services research director at
industry analyst firm GartnerGroup, agrees that BlueGill's technology
is an advantage. "Our just-completed market research of more than 170
leading U.S. billers found that 'ease of interfacing with legacy
billing and accounts receivable systems' stands out as the single most
important criterion businesses use when choosing an e-billing company,"
Litan said. "BlueGill's expertise in XML and experience managing
e-billing functions directly or through programming interfaces meet
this need."
Sinisgalli said CheckFree plans to utilize BlueGill's experience
working with other software and service providers. "BlueGill's solid
partnerships with a variety of software and service providers,
including IBM, Xerox, EDS, M&I Data, Moore Business Communications
Services and Broadvision. This brings tremendous value to CheckFree,
and can help us create together electronic bills and statements that
can be leveraged in Internet-based customer relationship management,
marketing and service applications for both the business-to-consumer
and business-to-business markets," Sinisgalli said.
Sinisgalli also noted that BlueGill's existing technology relationships
with TransPoint, M&I Data Systems, financial institutions such as Chase
Manhattan, CitiBank, and BankOne and 16 biller service bureaus can be
leveraged to help advance interoperability among vendors, consumer
service providers and biller service providers in the electronic
billing and payment market.
"Although BlueGill's i-Series software will connect to CheckFree's
industry-leading Genesis 2000 electronic billing and payment processing
platform, it also will continue to connect, as it does today, to all
commercially reasonable distribution points," Sinisgalli said.
"Likewise, CheckFree will continue to work with other open
standards-based biller server software providers who want to utilize
Genesis 2000," he said.
Raising the Bar for Leading Electronic Billing and Payment Pete Kight,
CheckFree's chairman and CEO, said that CheckFree and BlueGill share a
common culture for continuing to advance the requirements for market
leadership in electronic billing and payment.
"CheckFree and BlueGill each have a history of building products and
services with a vision that demands scalability and reliability, with a
quality consumer experience always first in mind," said Kight. "Beyond
the core application of electronic billing and payment, we also share a
vision of electronic bills as interactive communication tools. Each
month, businesses interact with their customers through a vitally
important conduit, the bill. How that interaction can be channeled into
other marketing, sales and customer service applications over the
Internet is one of the most enticing promises of this technology.
"To realize that promise, we first must speed adoption of the core
electronic billing and payment application," Kight continued. "We
believe joining our technology and services with BlueGill's will help
us, together, help billers bring electronic bills to the Internet at
the pace consumers want. The question of whether or not consumers want
this service has been answered. They do. Now the question is 'how fast
can they get it?' The driving force behind our union with BlueGill is
to make the answer, 'Fast.' We're very proud to be associated with Hal
Davis and his team, and look forward to exciting times ahead."
Hal Davis, BlueGill's president and CEO, concurred. "A common vision is
important in the union of any two companies," Davis said. "CheckFree
and BlueGill already share a history of working together to deliver
electronic billing and payment solutions for 15 customers, including
MCI Worldcom, Chase, GTE Wireless and SallieMae. Through those
experiences, we have learned a great deal about each other's missions
and values. CheckFree's market visibility and leadership strengthens
BlueGill's brand, and our business-to-business expertise, strategic
partnership network and international foothold gives CheckFree exciting
avenues in which to expand its business. We look forward to working
together to dramatically increase the impact Internet billing and
payment has on the way companies and their customers interact in the
next century," Davis concluded.
In terms of market expansion, BlueGill's experience with customers in
South America and Europe, including Barclay's Bank and Cable &
Wireless, and its software development operations in Toronto, Canada,
give CheckFree a stronger foothold in expanding its services
internationally. CheckFree already has some international experience
through its electronic billing and payment relationship with New
Zealand Post.
Terms of the Transaction CheckFree will exchange approximately 3.2
million shares of CheckFree Common Stock for all outstanding BlueGill
Capital Stock, based on a valuation of $250 million. The transaction
will be accounted for as a purchase, and is expected to be final in
early calendar 2000. According to Sinisgalli, BlueGill's management
team, base of about 100 employees, and locations in Ann Arbor, Michigan
and Toronto, Canada, will remain with the Company. The unit's financial
results will be reported within CheckFree's software business segment.
"For the remainder of CheckFree's fiscal year, which ends June 30, we
expect BlueGill to contribute about $5 million of incremental revenue,
and to dilute earnings per share by about 10 cents per share before
amortization charges," Sinisgalli noted. "Over the next 30 to 60 days,
BlueGill and CheckFree will work together to develop joint product
development, sales and operational plans that ensure our customers,
partners and prospects gain the full benefits of our having joined our
technologies and services."
About CheckFree CheckFree Corporation (www.checkfree.com), is the
leading provider of financial electronic commerce services and
products. Founded as an electronic payments processor in 1981,
CheckFree launched the first fully integrated electronic billing and
payment solution, CheckFree E-Bill, in March of 1997. Today, CheckFree
services enable three million consumers to receive and pay bills over
the Internet or electronically. The Company has multi-year contracts
with 77 of the nation's top billers to provide online billing and
payment through its network of partnerships with consumer service
providers (CSPs), including banks, brokerage firms, Internet portals
and content sites, and personal financial management (PFM) software.
CheckFree's Investment Services division provides a range of investment
management services to help more than 255 institutions provide
portfolio management and reporting services to their clients. CheckFree
clients manage over 760,000 portfolios totaling more than $400 billion
in assets. Software and services provided by CheckFree's Software
division are used to process more than two-thirds of the nation's six
billion Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments. In addition, nearly
400 banks and businesses use reconciliation products and services the
division provides.
About BlueGill Technologies Founded in 1996, BlueGill Technologies
pioneered Internet bill and statement presentment, and today is an
international software development company. BlueGill software provides
a powerful platform for electronic billing and payment by transforming
legacy systems into interactive Web applications for managing customer
relationships. BlueGill software is installed at financial service
institutions, telecommunications companies, utilities, and service
bureaus in North America, South America and Europe. The Company's
roster of clients and partners includes companies such as CitiBank,
Chase Manhattan Bank, U.S. Bank, ABN AMRO, EDS, Cable & Wireless,
Guardian Insurance, Capital One, Detroit Edison, Billserv.com, IBM and
Xerox. More information on the Company is available on the Internet at
www.bluegill.com .
This press release contains statements that are not purely historical,
and as such are forward-looking statements under the Federal Securities
laws. These include forward-looking statements regarding management's
intentions, plans, hopes, beliefs, expectations or projections of the
future, and include statements in this document regarding: the
advancement in interoperability (paragraphs 4-9); the increase in pace
to bring electronic bills to the Internet (paragraph 12); the ability
of the Company to expand into new international markets (paragraph 14);
the closing of the acquisition of BlueGill (paragraph 15); and the
financial impact of the acquisition of BlueGill on the Company
(paragraph 16). These forward looking statements involve risks and
uncertainties, including without limitation, whether the planned
technology developments will be successful and accepted by the
Company's customers; whether the Company can deliver its services at
the pace demanded by the marketplace; whether the Company can
successfully and profitably expand and operate internationally; whether
the conditions to the merger, including stockholder, regulatory and
other approvals, can be satisfied or obtained to permit the closing of
the acquisition; whether BlueGill can be successfully integrated with
the Company's operations; whether consumers will sign up for and use
the Company's services when and as expected; whether the Company's
customers, particularly financial institutions and Internet portals,
timely announce, actively offer and aggressively market such services
to their clients and users; whether the Company's business and market
assumptions supporting its current revenue and earnings projections
will prove to be accurate; and other risks and uncertainties detailed
from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. These SEC filings include Form 10-K
for the year ended June 30, 1999 and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended
September 30, 1999. One or more of these factors have affected, and
could in the future affect, the Company's business and financial
results in future periods, and could cause actual results to differ
materially from plans and projections. There can be no assurance that
the forward-looking statements made in this press release 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.
SOURCE CheckFree Holdings
(C) 1999 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.
prnewswire.com
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CONTACT: Judy Morris, Media Relations Contact, 678-375-1595, or
jdmorris@checkfree.com, or Tina Moore, Investor Relations
Contact,
678-375-1278, or tmoore@checkfree.com, both of CheckFree
Holdings
/Company News On-Call:
prnewswire.com or fax,
800-758-5804, ext. 110744
WEB PAGE: checkfree.com
GEOGRAPHY: Georgia
INDUSTRY CODE: CPR
FIN
MLM
SUBJECT CODE: TNM
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