Finablr to invest $ 200 million in IPO – CEO

ABU DHABI, May 26 (Reuters) – Finance and foreign exchange company Finablr plans to use half of the proceeds from the sale of its shares in London earlier this month to grow organically and via acquisitions, announced Sunday its managing director.

The UAE-based company, whose brands include UAE Exchange, Travelex Holdings and Xpress Money, has raised $ 400 million in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. Half of this amount was raised by selling new shares.

"This money will strengthen our balance sheet and give us more firepower to execute our expansion strategy," Promath Manghat told Reuters.

The expansion plans also include acquisitions focused on intellectual property and technology, as well as payments and foreign exchange transactions, he said.

The investment over the next two to three years will be in existing operations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, as well as in payment activities in Europe and the United States, said Manghat.

Finablr will continue to strengthen its partnerships with payment technology companies such as Google India, WeChat, in China, and expand into the fast-growing markets of the Middle East, Asia and Africa that are at the forefront. eve of the digital transformation, he said. Finablr currently has 23 million retail consumers and 1,500 institutional partners in 170 countries. "Over the next three to five years, Finablr will continue to transform, have greater scale in the volumes it manages and the number of partnerships," he said. Finablr expects its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to rise to 14 percent in the next three to five years, up from 14 percent currently, Manghat said without giving details.

The company will announce its first results on the London Stock Exchange after June 30 this year.

The price of Finablr's IPO was 175 pence per share, well below the original range of 210 to 260 pence, giving the company an implied market value of around 1 pence. , 23 billion pounds (1.59 billion dollars).

Finablr has attracted major long-term investors such as BlackRock, Norges Bank, etc. "For us, it's a long-term value creation event, it's not an event taking the price, we've always wanted to do an IPO," he said. (Report by Stanley Carvalho, Edited by Jane Merriman)