OPay Pulls $304M New York IPO Hours After Pricing

Nigerian payments company OPay has called off its New York Stock Exchange debut, one of the largest listings by an African fintech, just as its shares were due to start trading.

The company had priced 16 million American depositary shares at $19 each on Friday, 30 October. That is the bottom of its $19–$21 range and would have raised about $304 million at a valuation of roughly $4 billion. The shares, under the ticker OPAY, never opened. In a statement on Saturday, OPay said it and its underwriters had mutually agreed to terminate the underwriting agreement dated 29 October.

OPay gave one reason: a regulatory inquiry in a foreign jurisdiction. It did not name the regulator or say what the inquiry concerns. It described the jurisdiction as “immaterial” to its core business.

“Not proceeding with the offering at this time would be the most prudent course of action,” the company said. It added that it is “confident that the inquiry will be concluded satisfactorily in the near future,” and that the development should not be read as a reflection on its business performance, financial condition, operational integrity or regulatory standing.

For the people who use the app, OPay says nothing changes. It describes the impact on day-to-day operations in Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan as “zero.” The app handles payments, transfers, savings and loans for people with limited access to traditional banks, and its prospectus puts monthly active users at about 50 million as of 31 July. OPay said Nigeria “remains a particularly important market” and that its commitment there is unchanged.

The company, founded in 2018 by Chinese billionaire Yahui Zhou, has SoftBank Group entities as shareholders with a 6.6 per cent stake. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Standard Bank and China International Capital Corp were underwriters. Standard Bank had also agreed to buy up to $200 million of shares in a private placement alongside the listing.

OPay’s board and shareholders had also approved a secondary listing on the Nigerian Exchange after the New York debut. The sources do not say what the withdrawal means for that plan, or for what happens to investor funds. OPay says it will give further updates as material developments emerge.

Several companies worldwide have recently delayed listings, which it attributed to stubborn inflation and a sell-off in AI-related stocks.