In IPO Debut, Adyen Valuation Jumps Nearly 90 Percent

The FinTech rally comes to the Street.

Well, at least for one firm, which had an IPO this week – and that would be Adyen.

The debut day for the Dutch payments processing firm was a stellar one, as the IPO led to a 90 percent boost above the offer price. As Barron’s noted, the trading marked one of the best and biggest performances by a European tech stock as measured over the past several years.

Thus the market cap upon the last shares changing hands: $15.8 billion. The performance takes its place behind Spotify, as seen in April.

A number of voices chimed in about the firm and its performance for the day.

“Today’s IPO on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange is a big day for the company, and for FinTech startups reinventing the centuries-old financial services industry,” Barron’s quoted Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures (and among Adyen’s largest shareholders), as writing via a blog post on Wednesday.

Still, others were a bit more guarded about the numbers. Considering the valuation, Jos Versteeg, senior equity research analyst at InsingerGilissen Bankiers, told the newswire that Adyen now trades at high multiples – and at almost 100 times its projected 2018 earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (also known as EBITDA).

Valuations imply high growth expectations, and the company would have to grow quickly to grow into those multiples. In other stats, the company, a dozen years old, reported $1.2 billion in revenues last year. That compares to a processing volume that was up 63 percent in 2017 over 2016, to $127 billion. That comes as Adyen has brought on eBay as a key client, siphoned off from PayPal.