CAB Payments Sees ‘Significant’ IPO Interest Despite Rocky UK Market

CAB Payments Holdings has confirmed its plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange.

The payments services/foreign exchange company had first announced plans for an initial public offering last week, and restated those intentions Thursday (June 15).

“Following significant interest in CAB Payments, the Board is delighted to confirm the management team’s intention to float on the London Stock Exchange via a premium listing,” Ann Cairns, chair of the company’s board, said in the new announcement.

“Bringing CAB Payments to the public market underscores our confidence in the business and its value generation potential, as well as our confidence in the U.K. as the home for innovative and growing global businesses.”

The news comes at a time when not every business shares the confidence Cairns mentioned. For example, Thursday also brought reports that another British firm — WE Soda — had canceled its plans to go public on the London market.

The company — which produces the manufacturing compound soda ash — had wanted to raise $759 million (or 600 million pounds) through its IPO flotation, valuing it at north of $7.5 billion.

But WE Soda told the BBC news that investors in the U.K. “remain extremely cautious” and the company could not reach a valuation it considered fair.

The BBC report pointed out that WE Soda CEO Alasdair Warren had said two weeks ago that “London still works” and that the London market would “well understand our business.”

As noted here last month, many tech companies in the U.K. have decided not to list on their home turf, a trend exemplified by British semiconductor designer Arm’s decision to list in New York rather than London.

A recent CNBC report attributed tech companies’ unease about U.K. IPOs to the local investors’ treatment of high-growth tech companies, as well as to Brexit.

Venture capitalists told CNBC that institutional investors in London are in the market for stocks that will generate dividends rather than high growth, that the investors don’t understand the tech industry, and that the market is considered “very problematic.”

PYMNTS spoke with CAB CEO Bhairav Trivedi last month about the company’s plans to expand its worldwide market share, particularly in post-Brexit Europe, where it is seeking a payment license to operate in all 27 European Union states.

Allowing customers to access a 24-hour trading service is also a key priority: “We want them to trade when they want to trade, not when they have to trade,” Trivedi said, adding that selling to customers in their local markets, rather of operating solely from their U.K. headquarters, is also among CAB’s goals.