Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder and CEO of GoCardless.
Zed Jameson Bloomberg | Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — Financial technology unicorns are in no hurry to go public after buy-now, pay-later company Claruna files for a U.S. IPO — but they are keeping a close eye on signs of when the market will reopen are.
Last week, Klarna filed a confidential filing to go public in the United States, ending months of speculation over where the Swedish digital payments company would go public. The timing of the IPO is still unclear, and Klarna has not yet determined pricing or the number of shares it will issue to the public.
Still, the development has generated buzz from the fintech industry, with market watchers asking whether the move is the beginning of a resurgence of large fintech IPOs. For now, that doesn’t seem to be the case, but the founders say they will be keeping an eye on the IPO market and keeping an eye on price and ultimately stock price trends.
Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of online payments startup GoCardless, said last week that it’s not the right time for the company to fire the gun for an IPO. He sees going public more as a milestone in the journey than an end goal.
“The market has been in a tough spot for the past few years,” Takeuchi said at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, where the GoCardless business was finally valued at more than $2 billion. He spoke at a panel discussion.
“We need to focus on building a better business,” Takeuchi added, noting that if startups do it right, “the rest will follow.” GoCardless specializes in recurring payments, transactions that are debited from consumers’ bank accounts in a routine manner, such as monthly donations to charities.
Lucy Liu, co-founder of cross-border payments company Airwallex, agreed with Takeuchi and said it was not the right time for Airwallex to go public. In a separate interview, Liu told CNBC that Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Chan has previously stated that the company is “ready for an IPO” by 2026. He pointed out that he expected it to be completed.
“Each company is different,” said Liu, sitting alongside Takeuchi on the same panel on stage. Airwallex is more focused on doing its best to resolve frictions in global cross-border payments, she said.
An IPO is a goal in the company’s trajectory, but it’s not the final milestone, according to Liu. “We are in constant dialogue with our investor shareholders,” he said, adding that changes would be made “when the time is right.”
Fintech IPO “star-aligned”
One thing is for sure, though: analysts are much more optimistic about the prospects for fintech IPOs than they used to be.
“We have outlined five handles to open the door. [IPO] Nabina Rajan, senior research analyst at private market data firm Pitchbook, told CNBC.
“We’re definitely in a good place, but at the end of the day, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We have a new president,” Rajan continued. “It will be interesting to see the timing and valuation of the IPO.”
Fintech companies have raised about 6.2 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in venture capital since the beginning of the year through October 30, according to Pitchbook data.
Jaydev Janardhana, CEO and co-founder of British digital bank Zopa, told CNBC that an IPO is not an immediate priority for the company.
“To be honest, it’s not a top priority for me,” Janardhana told CNBC. “We continue to be fortunate to have supportive and long-term shareholders who will support our future growth.”
He suggested that private markets remain the most accommodative place for now to build a technology business focused on investing in growth.
However, Zopa’s CEO added that there are signs that the IPO market will become more favorable in the coming years, with the US likely to open up in 2025.
According to Janardhana, this should mean Europe will be more open to IPOs next year. He declined to say where Zopa plans to list.
