Lightbridge Pays $82 Million to Buy Authorize.net

Lightbridge Inc., a Burlington, Mass.-based provider of software and transaction services to wireless telecommunications carriers, today announced it is buying Authorize.net for $82 million in cash in a deal expected to close by June 30. Eight-year-old Authorize.net is an American Fork, Utah-based subsidiary of InfoSpace Inc., Bellevue, Wash. It provides a credit card and electronic-check transaction processing gateway to mostly small and medium Web-based merchants. InfoSpace announced last October it was seeking a buyer for Authorize.net so it could concentrate on its online directory and search business. Lightbridge expects to pair Authorize.net's Internet transaction-processing capabilities with its own specialties in automated fraud-detection and other so-called decisioning strenghs to build its transaction-processing business in new markets. Lightbridge was also attracted to Authorize.net's recurring transaction-based revenue stream, proprietary technology, and extensive reseller network. “We are confident Lightbridge's risk and fraud-assessment technologies coupled with Authorize.net's payment gateway technology will position (Lightbridge) for exciting new opportunities in transaction services for a variety of customer markets,” said Pamela D.A. Reeves, chief executive of Lightbridge, in a statement. Authorize.net reported 2003 revenue of $27.8 million from a merchant base of about 91,000. An aggressive user of independent sales organizations, financial institutions, and other third-party resellers, the company has seen its merchant base more than double from 40,000 five years ago. Lightbridge released a guidance today indicating it expects first-quarter revenues of $26.5 million to $29 million, with earnings per share of negative 2 cents to negative 6 cents.