Shares of First Data closed lower on Thursday in the payment processing company’s Wall Street debut.
The stock opened 2 percent above its $16 a share initial public offering price, but later went negative in up-and-down trading. First Data shares ended the day 1.5 percent lower.
“Their biggest customers, Citi, Bank of America … are pretty sticky, but some of their smaller customers, the smaller merchants, tend to switch based on price. A lot of the smaller merchants are going to be switching [out of First Data] to simpler payment solutions,” Gil Luria, financial technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
“It will be challenging for First Data to maintain its leadership position,” he said.
First Data hoped to raise as much as $3.7 billion in what was expected to be the biggest initial public offering of the year.
“It’s a great day for us to open. We feel fabulous about [the IPO],” CEO Frank Bisignano said on “Squawk on the Street” shortly after the stock began trading.
Bisignano said he feels confident the company can compete with the likes of Square, which recently filed for its own IPO, and even Visa.
“If you look at what we’ve done over the past two years, we’ve really transformed the company,” he said. “We were a no-growth company and we’ve changed that. We changed how we approached our clients … and changed how we do business with small and medium-sized businesses.”
First Data’s stock was the most active at the New York Stock Exchange, surpassing Bank of America, General Electric and Wal-Mart Stores in volume.
[“source -cncb”]
