Payments firm Adyen plans June listing amid flurry of deals

By Toby Sterling

AMSTERDAM, May 24 (Reuters) - Adyen, a Dutch company that processes payments for Airbnb, Uber, Spotify and Netflix, plans to list on the Amsterdam stock exchange in June in the midst of a wave of dealmaking in the digital payments industry.

Sources close to the matter told Reuters last month that Adyen was eyeing a valuation of 6-9 billion euros ($7-$11 billion), which would make it the largest tech listing by a European company since Spotify's April debut in New York, and one of the biggest by a European fintech to date.

The digital payments sector has seen a string of deals as companies look to acquire new technologies in a global business where upstarts are rapidly taking market share from traditional payment processors.

Last week, U.S. giant PayPal agreed to buy smartphone payment terminal provider iZettle for $2.2 billion in the midst of the Swedish company's own initial public offering.

Adyen, which competes primarily with WorldPay owner Vantiv and France's Worldline to serve large online retailers that need to handle cross-border payments, said in a statement its shareholders planned to sell a 15 percent stake.

In January, Adyen won the contract to handle eBay's payments, beating out former in-house service PayPal, which eBay spun off three years ago. Adyen has also been expanding into in-store "point of sales" payment processing.

"This offering provides us with the freedom to keep building the company, while offering our shareholders a path to liquidity," said chief executive and co-founder Pieter van der Does in the statement.

Current Adyen backers include early and still largest investor Index Ventures, along with Iconiq Capital, the Silicon Valley fund that is an investment vehicle for the founders of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Iconiq bought a stake of undisclosed size in 2015 in a deal that valued the whole of Adyen at $2.3 billion. Other investors include General Atlantic, Temasek and Felicis Ventures.

In 2017, Adyen made adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 99 million euros, with net revenue up 38 percent to 218 million euros.

It processed 108 billion euros worth of transactions, up 63 percent from 2016.

Chief Commercial Officer Roelant Prince said at a press briefing last month that merchants' need to keep up with a bewildering array of mobile payment software would ensure the company continued to grow quickly.

He said the company thrived in complex situations where merchants need to handle multiple forms of payments, combine in-store and online payments, and accept many currencies. (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter)

Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.