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Horizon Advises XE on Acquisition

Last Thursday (7/2/15), XE, a Horizon client, was acquired by Euronet Worldwide.  The transaction was the result of a M&A market exploration process conducted by Horizon.

XE has established itself as the world’s leading provider of currency related data, fulfilling more than 2.9 billion annual requests.  XE’s XE.com and x-rates.com websites draw more than 1.6 billion total page views from more than 200 million unique visitors per year, while its mobile app has achieved more than 35 million downloads and three billion rate requests since it was launched in 2009.  These user statistics consistently rank XE in the top 500 global websites, comparable to leading brands such as Reuters, Samsung and the Wall Street Journal according to Alexa.com, an analytics website.

Euronet Worldwide is an industry leader in processing secure electronic financial transactions. The Company offers payment and transaction processing solutions to financial institutions, retailers, service providers and individual consumers. These services include comprehensive ATM, POS and card outsourcing services, card issuing and merchant acquiring services, software solutions, cash-based and online-initiated consumer-to-consumer and business-to-business money transfer services, and electronic distribution of prepaid mobile phone time and other prepaid products.

“Euronet’s vision is to become the global leader in digital money transfer and XE is one more milestone towards that goal,” said Michael J. Brown, Euronet’s Chairman and CEO.  “Building a brand and generating high quality traffic to your digital properties require some of the heaviest investment when constructing a digital business.  XE has made that investment and in doing so, has become a top 500 global website and the world’s top currency site, serving more than 200 million unique visitors annually – 49% of which have a payment need according to a recent poll of XE users.  This strong brand presence speaks to the quality and potential of this asset. Ria and HiFX bring XE many of the products and capabilities that the XE team and their customers need, while XE brings Euronet the exposure and high quality traffic that would have taken us a decade to build.  With almost half of XE’s visitors needing to make an international payment, you can really see why we are so excited about the combined opportunity and look forward to becoming the leading global digital international payments provider.”

“XE has found a home,” said Steven Dengler, XE co-founder and CEO.  “XE’s online presence and brand, combined with Euronet’s product and geographic capabilities, have the potential to propel XE’s growth well beyond anything we might have achieved on our own.  We are pleased to combine the knowledge and capabilities of our leadership team and employees with that of Ria and HiFX in order to achieve Euronet’s strategic goals.”

Please let us know if you’d like to learn more about this transaction and the Horizon process.  The transaction represents a unique opportunity for XE’s founders and employees, allowing them to enjoy a significant financial liquidity event while continuing as equity owners (through stock consideration in Euronet) and operators.

You can read more about the transaction on Euronet’s website and in articles published by other media outlets.

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