Pine Labs files for a 'confidential' US IPO to raise up to $500 million

Bengaluru: Pine Labs, an digital payments and financial services provider, has filed for a ‘confidential’ initial public offering (IPO) worth $500 million with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, two persons close to the development confirmed to ET on Monday.

The company, which is expected to make its market debut later this year on the US exchanges, may look to
seek a valuation between $6 billion and $7 billion, one of them said. However, the final details on the size
of the IPO and valuation are still to be finalised, one of the persons cited above said.


Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau declined to comment on the matter.

A confidential IPO helps a company to withhold its financial information and other details from rivals for a relatively longer period of time compared to the traditional S-1 filings in the US where one has to give the full
picture of the firm’s finances and other data points.

Earlier this month, Pine Labs said India’s largest lender State Bank of India had invested $20 million in the company, without disclosing further details. ET had last month reported that Falcon Edge was in talks to invest at least $100 million in Pine Labs and that the total funding round may get extended to up to $200 million in size. In September, the company had raised $100 million from US-based Invesco Developing Markets Fund, just months after it raised $600 million across two tranches from a slew of public market investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Co. and BlackRock Inc.

Pine Labs’ valuation at the time was $3.5 billion.

Bloomberg was the first to report on the company’s IPO filing on Monday afternoon.

Last year, ET was the first to report that Wall Street bankers Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs havebeen appointed as lead bookrunning managers for the IPO.

Pine Labs is backed by Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Actis, PayPal and Mastercard among others. The Noida-based firm is one of the highest valued fintech startups in the country after One97 Communications
Ltd.-owned Paytm that recently went public, digital payments major PhonePe, and merchant-focused fintech Razorpay.

The company has been actively strengthening its play in the Southeast Asian markets through a partnership
with Mastercard as well as through the acquisition of loyalty startup Fave in April last year. It had plans to expand to West Asia this year.