Fellow Finance goes public

The P2P platform has raised €10m following the IPO. Anticipating rapid growth, Fellow Finance’s offering was two times oversubscribed.

Finnish peer-to-peer lender Fellow Finance is now executing its initial public offering (IPO). Having discussed its plans for the IPO at the end of September, the company is going public today.

The platform is expected to raise approximately €10m. With a valuation of €55m at the close of the IPO on Tuesday, the platform anticipates rapid growth. The IPO saw 1.3 million new shares in the company on offer for an 18.3 per cent stake in the company. The offer was 2.2 times oversubscribed.

In addition to the new shares on offer, just under 1.3 million in existing shares in the company will go on sale too. Taaleri, a wealth management group and majority shareholder in Fellow Finance, is offering over 800,000 shares in the platform. This will consequently reduce its 45 per cent stake to 26 per cent.  

Established five years ago, the platform has €310.6m in assets, €115m of which has been accumulated in the last year. The majority of Fellow Finance’s revenue comes from borrower fees. This year, an estimated €12m has been made in revenue and operating profit was between €3.1m and €3.6m.

Fellow Finance is among a small number of European P2P lenders to go public. It revealed its IPO plans only a few days before Funding Circle’s shares started trading. Since then, Funding Circle’s share price has had a significant slide but has recently recovered from a low point of 340p on Monday to over 392p today.