Santander's Ebury aims for IPO in 2025, hires Perella Weinberg - CEO

Perella Weinberg Partners

06/11/2023 13:32

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  SAN.MC , 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)
 ((andres.gonzalez@thomsonreuters.com; +44 (0) 7551 790019;
Reuters Messaging:
andres.gonzalez.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))