PensionBee is aiming for a valuation of up to £384 million as the financial technology group pushes ahead with plans for a stock market flotation that will confirm its 35-year-old co-founder as a multimillionaire on paper.
The loss-making company, which is behind a smartphone app for pensions, announced that it would price its shares at between 155p and 175p in its listing on the high growth segment of the London Stock Exchange.
That would give the group a market capitalisation of between £346 million and £384 million.
The top end of the range would value the 36.2 per cent stake of Romi Savova, its co-founder and chief executive, at about £140 million. Savova and PensionBee’s other directors and senior bosses are not planning on selling any stock through the initial public offering.
Savova is a former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley investment banker who had the idea for PensionBee in 2014, when she found it difficult to transfer one of her pensions from a former employer.
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Her company, which has racked up net losses since its inception, allows customers to consolidate their legacy retirement pots into a single investment plan. It generated annual revenues of almost £6.3 million last year but fell to a £13.5 million pre-tax loss.
It had about 137,000 active customers as of the end of March, up 77 per cent from a year earlier, according to a trading update it published alongside its flotation price range. The increase in clients drove a 123 per cent year-on-year rise in its assets under administration to £1.65 billion.
PensionBee has offered its customers the opportunity to buy shares as part of its listing and so far more than 12,000 have registered to participate. Savova said: “We’re delighted that so many of our customers wish to join us as shareholders and look forward to welcoming all of our new investors as important stakeholders in our business.”
The company aims to raise £55 million from its offer of new shares, money it will use to develop its technology and finance advertising and marketing campaigns.
Savova, along with her co-founder Jonathan Lister Parsons, who is the company’s chief technology officer, have committed not to sell shares in the business for almost two years after the listing.