👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Unicorns in public

There must be something in the water that Egyptian fintechs drink, and we’re keen on finding out what it is.

Over the years, a few fintechs have gone public on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX); chief among them is Fawry, one of the country’s largest fintech companies. Now, MNT Halan, the Egyptian fintech unicorn, is eyeing a similar arrangement, but something more nuanced.

What happened? MNT-Halan has just cleared one of the biggest regulatory hurdles standing between it and an initial public offering (IPO). On Monday, the EGX approved the temporary listing of 1.6 billion shares in MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments, the holding company for its Egyptian business. Only the Egyptian unit is going public. Its parent company, which also owns subsidiaries in Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, will remain private. The fintech’s shares will appear on the Egyptian stock exchange under the ticker “HALN.CA.”

Dear Egyptians reading TC Daily, before you start refreshing your trading app, though, this does not mean you can buy MNT-Halan shares yet. The temporary listing gives the company six months to complete the offering and meet the remaining listing requirements. If it does not, the listing lapses, although the regulator can extend the deadline.

Does this even matter? We think so, yes. MNT-Halan raised $400 million in 2023 to become a unicorn; overall, the company has raised so much funding, especially through securitisation—debt—that it’s now hard to track. Forbes estimated its total funding at $550 million. That funding has also translated into scale: it has disbursed over $15.5 billion in loans and serves over 8 million users. As of 2022, the fintech said it earned $300 million in revenue.

MNT-Halan’s public offer could be a big one. In June, Bloomberg reported that the fintech was considering an IPO that could value its Egyptian business at $900 million to $1 billion. The fintech itself was valued at $1.4 billion in a June funding round led by a National Bank of Egypt (NBE) investment arm, Al Ahly Capital.

The company has also been working with Citigroup and EFG Hermes on the potential transaction and has already started meeting investors. Its temporary listing signals that the IPO is gaining momentum.

What’s next? MNT-Halan still needs to complete the offering and satisfy the remaining regulatory requirements. But if it gets there, it could give the EGX one of its most closely watched startup listings in years, while giving investors a chance to own a piece of one of Egypt’s biggest fintech stories.

And after all the talk about African startups struggling to find exits, watching one of the continent’s biggest fintechs—backed by names such as Chimera Investments, Lorax, and DFIs like the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—make the jump from unicorn to public company should be pretty interesting.

Zoom out: Investors who own at least 10% when MNT-Halan lists will have to keep 51% of their stake for at least two financial years.