Opay Ltd., a Nigeria-focused payments platform, is seeking to raise up to $336 million in an initial public offering (IPO).
The company plans to market 16 million American depositary receipts for $19 to $21 each, according to its filing Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Each ADR is equivalent to 10 ordinary Opay shares.
Investors including Redwheel, Corornation Investment Management International Pty and Sundt ASÂ agreed to buy as much as $270 million of ADRs in aggregate at the IPO price, the filing shows.
Concurrently, Standard Bank Group Ltd. has agreed to buy Opay ordinary shares in a private placement, the filing shows.
The consideration for the shares is subject to a formula equivalent to the lesser of $200 million or potential metrics including a percentage of Opay’s shares outstanding on completion of the offering, or of Standard Bank’s regulatory capital.
At the midpoint of the price range, Opay could have a market value of more than $4 billion based on the outstanding ordinary shares listed in the filing.
Opay had net income of $61 million on revenue of $467.1 million for the six months ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $5.9 million on revenue of $197.5 million in the corresponding period a year earlier, according to the filing.
The company is emerging as one of Africa’s most valuable fintech companies and a dominant player in Nigeria’s fast-growing digital payments sector.
Opay was founded by Chinese tycoon James Zhou, who is the company’s non-executive chairman and largest shareholder with a 21% stake prior to the IPO, the filing shows.
The company raised $400 million in 2021 at a valuation of $2 billion, in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from HSG, formerly the China division of Sequoia Capital, and Long-Z Capital, the venture arm of Chinese food-delivery giant Meituan.
Zhou is the billionaire founder of Chinese technology company Kunlun Tech Co, which owns the Opera web browser company and had sold dating app Grindr under US regulatory pressure.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has become a place for fintech unicorns including Flutterwave, Moniepoint and Interswitch to grow.
The company expects its ADRs to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker OPAY.
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