The Co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola, has said the company is forging ahead with its planned Initial Public Offering against all odds because it is very crucial to realize its targets.
Agboola in an interview with Bloomberg said going public has become necessary for the company to attract large global clients.
According to him, this would mean that Flutterwave would be having the same level of compliance with the global clients.
- “There’s some kind of customers we’ll attract when we are public. The large global clients who need you to have the same level of compliance and level of global view that they have,” Agboola was quoted in the interview.
Agboola was said to have brushed aside accusations that it had refused to honour former employees’ stock rights and that staff was harassed and bullied, saying these were “very, very isolated,” cases and they wouldn’t affect the planned share sale.
He added that the company, which was recently embroiled in controversies in Kenya has won approval for the first step in securing the right to operate in the country.
While the time for the IPO is yet to be announced, Agboola conceded that “the markets aren’t great right now,” and this could slow any listing.
The company has previously said it may sell shares in New York and possibly Nigeria.
Payment app sees growth
Bloomberg reported that while declining to give an annual increase in total revenue Flutterwave said that its payment processing business through its payments app, SendApp, increased 23-fold in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2022.
Payments through point-of-sale devices rose more than fivefold and revenue in its small and medium business unit jumped almost fourfold.
Agboola sees the company growing its presence in the markets it is currently in and possibly seeking acquisitions to further its reach.
- “The goal is to make merchants across Africa, consumers across Africa use us more and know that we are the most reliable platform to use,” he said. “Africa is huge, the potential is huge,” he said.
Since its founding in 2016, Flutterwave has rapidly expanded and now has a presence in about 30 African countries.
Agboola has led funding rounds, with one in January last year tripling the company’s valuation to $3 billion.
Based in Lagos and San Francisco, Flutterwave has attracted investments from venture capital firms including Tiger Global Management LLC, and works with companies including Alibaba’s Alipay, Uber Technologies Inc. and Netflix Inc.
Agboola’s stake in the company was worth more than $370 million as of the company’s funding round last year, according to an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index using Pitchbook data.
I like flutterwave (FTW), I think it is premature to go public though. I don’t agree with the argument that you have to be public to attract some kind of clients. Stripe is many times the size of FTW and it’s still not public.