London lands its biggest fintech win since Wise as Airtel Money confirms LSE float
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist, Wealth Club: “The London market is celebrating a much-needed win, with fintech platform Airtel Money set to list on the LSE. After bracing to wave goodbye to Nscale, one of Britain’s AI infrastructure powerhouses, which has been lured by the bright lights of New York, there will be a sigh of relief that the Airtel Money IPO is going to get over the line.
The $9bn valuation expected for the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa is short of previous expectations, but even at this level it would still make it one of the biggest listings since Wise, another big fintech player, back in 2021.
This is helping cement London’s reputation as a big fintech centre of excellence, able to create the right base for start-ups and spin-offs to take big steps into a listed future. It bodes well for fledgling newcomers and scaleups and comes hot on the heels of the successful funding round for Sprive this week.
The listing has been a long time coming, with plenty of hiccups on the way, and the geopolitical situation increasing volatility on the markets won’t have helped. Airtel Africa had to make this deal work given that minority investors in the mobile money business, including Mastercard, put options dating back to 2021 on the investment, giving them the right to force Airtel Africa to buy back their stakes, at a cost currently put at around $515m, if the listing didn’t happen.
So the deal needed to be done, but it’s a compelling growth story which underpins hopes for a $9bn valuation. It operates across 14 nations in Africa, a continent which has been at the forefront of digital payments technology. The company has more than 56 million active users, and revenue is up over a quarter to $1.36 billion. The competition may be fierce, given that Airtel Money competes head-on with the likes of M-Pesa, and of course, by its very nature, the company will be sensitive to macroeconomic forces, but it enjoys a strong position in Africa’s fast-growing digital payments landscape.”