ATM maker NCR Corp. confirmed Thursday that Blackstone Group LP will invest $820 million into the company after its effort to sell itself foundered.

NCR said it plans to use Blackstone's investment, which will give the private-equity firm a stake of about 17% in NCR, to buy up to $1 billion of its shares starting Nov. 13.

The deal is expected to close by early December. The Wall Street Journal reported the talks Wednesday.

Blackstone will receive convertible preferred shares that pay a 5.5% dividend. The preferred shares are convertible to regular stock at $30. The firm will also get two board seats in exchange for the investment.

NCR stock closed Wednesday at $26.78, giving the Duluth, Ga., company a market value of $4.5 billion.

The agreement comes after Blackstone and other private-equity firms vied for a possible leveraged buyout of NCR, which carried more than $3 billion of debt as of September. That would have made it one of the largest recent LBOs, the pace of which has been slowed by regulatory and other headwinds.

NCR, founded in 1884, makes cash registers and other so-called point-of-sale devices in addition to cash machines. The company has struggled with lower demand as retail customers gravitate toward mobile-payment devices such as Apple Inc.'s Apple Pay. NCR stock has lost more than half its value from a 2007 high.

Blackstone is betting in part on a revival in NCR's software business, which powers kiosks that accept mobile payments and self-checkout lanes at many retailers, people familiar with the matter said.

The deal would be an example of a so-called private investment in public equity. Known as PIPEs, they are sometimes used as a fallback when a company strikes out on a full sale, and can serve as a source of cash to help facilitate strategic or other changes. In 2014, shoe maker Crocs Inc. took a $200 million investment from Blackstone after abandoning an effort to sell itself.

The Wall Street Journal reported in April that NCR was exploring strategic options including the spinoff or sale of assets or a return of cash to investors through a dividend or share buyback.

Write to Chelsey Dulaney at Chelsey.Dulaney@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 12, 2015 08:05 ET (13:05 GMT)

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