Fintech startup Pine Labs to seek $500 million in US IPO

The company has filed confidentially with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering in New York as soon as in the first half of this year, the people said. The listing could give Pine Labs a valuation of about $5.5 billion to $7 billion, they said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are the lead banks on the deal, the people said. Considerations are ongoing and details such as the size and timing could still change, the people said.

A representative for Singapore-based Pine Labs didn’t respond to requests for comment, while representatives for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Bloomberg News reported in August that Pine Labs is considering an IPO in 2022.

Led by chief executive officer Amrish Rau, the company in July raised about $600 million from investors including Fidelity Management & Research Co. and BlackRock Inc., according to a statement. The company said it was targeting a public offering within 18 months and has been operationally profitable for several years — a rarity among the new crop of Indian fintechs.

The startup, which offers solutions for in-store and online payments as well as prepaid, loyalty and “pay later” programs, is valued at $3 billion, Rau said at the time.

The deal was followed by an additional $100 million in funding from Invesco Developing Markets Fund. It also counts Temasek Holdings Pte, PayPal Holdings Inc. and Actis Capital among its other investors. India’s largest commercial bank, the State Bank of India, invested $20 million in the startup earlier this month.

Pine Labs serves over 150,000 merchants in India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The company has expanded both organically and via acquisitions including consumer fintech platform Fave last year. The digital payments gateway and commerce platform, whose main operations are in India, supports payments for enterprise customers including Apple Inc., McDonald’s Corp. and Starbucks Corp.