Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE:VNTV) is a leading domestic payment processor. Its core systems enable merchants to accept and process credit and debit card payments. Vantiv operated as a business unit within Fifth Third Bancorp until it was spun off as a separate company in 2009 and went public in 2012. The company is the second-largest merchant acquirer in the U.S. with 19 billion processed transactions across 800,000 merchant locations in 2015. Vantiv’s diverse merchant base is weighted toward non-discretionary everyday spend categories, such as grocery and pharmacy, and it includes ten of the top 25 national retailers by revenue.
Vantiv also provides its merchant clients value-added services, such as solutions to enhance their security standards and solutions that enable the acceptance of cards in e-commerce applications. Vantiv also provides payment services to financial institutions, such as card issuer processing and payment network processing.
Vantiv directly benefits from growth in consumer spending and the secular shift from cash and checks to electronic payments. In 2015, Vantiv earned just $0.07 per transaction across 23 billion transactions without taking consumer credit risk. Vantiv’s integrated technology platform is differentiated from competitors’ multi-platform architectures, and it enables the company to quickly deploy new services while providing significant economies of scale and superior margins. We believe that Vantiv is gaining market share because of its investments in integrated payments technology and higher-growth distribution channels, which should also promote better retention rates and cross-sales of its value-added services.
We believe that a meaningful industry shift toward chip-based, EMV-compliant payment cards should help drive continued strong organic growth. The company generates significant free cash flow, which is being used for accretive acquisitions, share repurchases, and purchases of tax receivable agreements from pre-IPO shareholders that effectively reduce its cash tax rate. We believe that Vantiv enjoys significant competitive advantages from its single technology platform, large entrenched customer base, and unique exposure to the integrated payment market.
From Baron Asset Funds' first quarter 2016 commentary.
