GRG International looks for extra capital
Automatic teller machine vendor GRG International will finally list on the Australian Securities Exchange tomorrow, making it the third specialist operator in the sector with a public listing of its shares. Having tidied up its initial prospectus to account, for litigation against disgruntled former customers and correcting directors' shareholdings, the company will list with a notional market capitalisation of $20 million.GRGI sold $4.5 million in new shares in the float at 20 cents each, $1 million more than sought under the prospectus.Jeffrey Barrow, managing director of GRGI, told media at a briefing in Melbourne yesterday that the firm was likely to be an acquirer of complementary businesses in Australia (where it is an independent deployer of ATMs, as it is in Britain) and also in the US, where it is a vendor of ATMs to banks. Whether this will require more capital is not clear.Barrow said the company's minority shareholder, and ATM supplier, GRG Banking (and which is the largest ATM maker in China) had approval to own up to 19.9 per cent of the firm. The GRG Banking stake is around 15 per cent, following the capital raising.Barrow said GRG had placed around 400 ATMs so far in Australia, more than the figure of 230 cited in the two-month old prospectus. Revenue growth in 2011 and 2012 is likely to be evenly split between deploying ATMs locally and selling ATMs in offshore markets, Barrow said. From 2013, most growth will come from ATM sales.GRGI is counting on its relationship with its minority shareholder, GRG, to drive sales.Mark Yip, general manager of GRG Banking Equipment, said the firm employed 460 engineers on research and development, and said the firm's ATMs were more efficient than those of many competitors. Some models recycle cash deposits, for instance, so reducing cash handling costs.However, the operating reliability of GRG's ATMs is one issue in the litigation between GRG and six former customers.On the issue of the level of ATM fees in Australia, where the medium fee is $2, Barrow questioned the pricing policy of National Australia Bank and credit unions, which charge $1.50. Servicing costs alone were $1.20 for each transaction, Barrow said, without taking into account hardware and other business costs.Commenting on NAB's pricing, he said: "They can't make a profit. They can make a loss."Customer resistance to paying ATM fees may be dwindling in the 18 months since the charging of these fees was made explicit. The proportion of transactions at an ATM owned by someone other than a cardholder's bank is lifting once more, according to data published by the RBA.