Santander's Ebury aims for IPO in 2025, hires Perella Weinberg - CEO
By Andres Gonzalez and Amy-Jo Crowley
LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Ebury has hired investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners to launch an initial public offering of the business as soon as 2025, the payments company CEO Juan Lobato told Reuters.
Ebury is majority owned by Spain's Santander, which last year raised its stake in the company to around 67% in the latest funding round that valued the UK-based firm at around 900 million pounds ($1.11 billion).
Ebury, which is focused on payments, cash management and trade finance for businesses, will report "sharp growth" when presenting its results in the coming weeks, Lobato said.
The company said last month it intended to go public, possibly listing on the London Stock Exchange in two or three years, without specifying who would manage the offering.
Lobato said the company could seek a capital raising before an IPO as one option.
"(An) IPO is what we are going to do and it is what we always wanted to do, this is well defined and reflected in our shareholding agreement," Lobato said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
"Perella is working with us to position Ebury for IPO, and (its) mandate does not reflect any sale of shares by existing shareholders," Lobato added.
Santander and Perella declined to comment.
In recent weeks, investors have grown cautious about the payments sector, with stretched valuations coming under pressure from higher interest rates and global funding of fintech deals dropping sharply.
In November of 2019, Santander bought a 50.1% stake in Ebury for 350 million pounds to accelerate its digital payments services strategy.
Electronic payments in the European Union grew to 240 trillion euros ($257.81 trillion) in 2021 from 184.2 trillion euros in 2017, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the European Commission.
Ebury is part of PagoNxt, Santander's global payments platform, which is one of the bank's five core global business areas.
In the first nine-months of 2023, PagoNxt increased revenues by 25% year-on-year to 820 million euros, but booked a loss of 101 million euros due to initial set up costs. In the third quarter alone, PagoNxt booked a net profit of 3 million euros. ($1 = 0.9309 euros) (Reporting by Andres Gonzalez and Amy-Jo Crowley, adittional reporting by Jesus Aguado, editing by Anousha Sakoui and Tomasz Janowski)
