(News Bulletin 247) – According to Bloomberg, the CVC fund plans to buy Nexi. This potential transaction benefits the French payments group because it highlights the sector’s undervaluation on the stock market.

Worldline does not occupy the head of the CAC 40 every day. On the contrary, since the start of the year the payments specialist has suffered one of the most pronounced declines (the third) in the Parisian index with a drop of 33%.

This fall is explained both by the rise in bond rates which weighs on technology stocks, fears about consumption in Europe (and therefore on payment transactions) but also a certain disenchantment of the market for the sector. The payments industry “elicits total indifference from investors,” Invest Securities noted in early October.

But this Wednesday Worldline regained momentum on the stock market, gaining 6% around 11:15 a.m., with a peak of more than 7% shortly after the opening, the best performance on the CAC 40. No announcement from the company led by Gilles Grapinet, which will publish its third quarter activity on October 25.

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CVC would look at the Nexi file

The company’s action actually benefits from a positive cross-reading on news about Nexi, an Italian company which constitutes Worldline’s largest competitor and comparable in Europe.

According to Bloomberg, the CVC Capital Partners fund is “in the first stages of considering a potential offer for the transalpine group, according to agency sources, who add that other investment companies have also looked into Nexi.

Contacted by Bloomberg, CVC and Nexi declined to comment. Nexi is enjoying a stock market fortune that is not really more enviable than that of Worldline.

A sector in decline

The Italian group’s shares have certainly “only” lost 8.5% since the start of the year. Except that this drop is greatly attenuated by the 17.7% increase in the share price on the Milan Stock Exchange, obviously due to press information from Bloomberg. This brings its market capitalization to 7.55 billion euros (compared to 7 billion for Worldline).

Worldline also benefits from the information surrounding Nexi “because it highlights that the payments sector has suffered a massive ‘derating’ (a depreciation of stock market multiples, Editor’s note) while the figures for Worldline and Nexi are generally good”, explains an analyst .

“The payments sector is paid around 6 times Ebitda, while it was trading between 10-12 times Ebitda during Worldline’s IPO (in 2014, Editor’s note) and even rose to 15 times “In this context, any rumor of acquisition hits the mark and the interest of private equity funds is a positive signal”, continues this financial intermediary.