Fidelity National Financial (FNF) is planning an initial public offering of stock in its subsidiary, Black Knight Financial Services, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the SEC filing, Fidelity filed S-1 with the SEC earlier this week. In the filing, Fidelity said that the number of shares to be offered and price range of the offering is yet to be determined.
If approved, Black Knight would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “BKFS.”
The stock offering would represent a bit of “Back to the Future” moment for Fidelity and Black Knight, the company formerly known as Lender Processing Services.
Lender Processing Services was originally spun off from a separate Fidelity spin-off, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS), in July 2008.
Fidelity brought Lender Processing Services back into the fold just about one year ago, when it acquired LPS for $2.9 billion. "We are excited to consummate the LPS acquisition and bring its market-leading technology solutions and services back into the FNF family," FNF Chairman William Foley said at the time.
"This combination creates a larger, broader, more diversified and recurring revenue base for FNF and makes us the nation's leading provider of transaction services and technology solutions to the real estate and mortgage industries."
The company was then re-branded as Black Knight Financial Services and has produced solid revenue for Fidelity throughout 2014.
In the second quarter, Black Knight recorded total revenue of $201 million, a sequential improvement of 7% versus the first quarter of 2014, led by mortgage servicing technology revenue of approximately $122 million. That helped to increase Fidelity’s total revenue from $1.6 billion in the second quarter of 2013 to $1.7 billion in the second quarter of 2014.
Fidelity matched that revenue total in the third quarter, with Black Knight reporting total revenue of $214 million in the third quarter, which was up 11% compared to the third quarter of 2013. The company attributed the growth to “RealEC and Data and Analytics, and factoring out the increase of $15 million during 2014 from the addition of Property Insight.”
