The Payments industry has been active in the initial public offering (IPO) market this week, with two marquee names already pushing forward with plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) – these include payment providers Worldpay and Equiniti.
The next payment firm in line to go public is Square, a startup owned by recently reappointed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey – the company will be going public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The announcement takes place less than a month after Mr. Dorsey returned to head Twitter, whereby retaining both CEO positions at Twitter and Square.
The company itself was co-founded by Mr. Dorsey back in 2009 as an mPOS provider. Square’s primary functionality was to help enable small businesses to utilize mobile technology to accept card payments – since then the company has manifested itself into a highly hyped startup in the fintech realm. Its ascension has been commensurate with the extant focus of the group, which has now moved into such areas as payroll services and capital financing. Despite its relative infancy, Square has managed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars ahead of a multi-billion dollar valuation.
At this juncture, Square has not disclosed any details as to what the number of shares offered will be or what the price range for the new listing will eventually be set at. Square will be listed as the ticker symbol NYSE:SQ. Any price range will likely be tempered by its H1 2015 profits, which posted a net loss of -$77.6 million, despite steadfast revenues of $560.6 million.
Earlier this week, the LSE saw the rollout of the largest UK IPO since 2013 when Worldpay, a British payment processor, moved ahead with its plans to raise a staggering $3.8 billion (£2.5 billion). In addition, Equiniti, a paramount handler of the majority of dividend payments made by FTSE 100 companies, has also managed to raise approximately $484.4 million (£315 million) from its London IPO as well.
