Fino Payments Bank (FPBL), which plans to hit the market with a Rs 1,200-crore initial public offering this week, said on Tuesday that post-IPO it would not require further capital raising for the next couple of years to propel growth.
The Mumbai-based bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fino Paytech (FPL), plans to raise around Rs 1,200 crore via IPO at the upper end of the price band. It has set the price band at Rs 560-577 per equity share. The issue will open for subscription on October 29 and close on November 2.
The issue includes a fresh issue of equity shares aggregating up to Rs 300 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of up to around 1.56 crore of equity shares by Fino Paytech. FPBL, incorporated in 2017, intends to utilise the net proceeds from the fresh issue towards augmenting the bank’s tier-1 capital base to meet its future capital requirements.
“Whatever we do, we will do as an asset light manner. Having said that asset light does not mean that we do not invest. We are definitely investing into the technology and the digital. For the larger part of our primary issue is required to be utilised into the digital and the technology as well. Do we need immediate capital after the IPO? The answer to this is no. This is based on the model and the planning and the transaction-oriented approach which we will take in the next couple of years and more,” said Rishi Gupta, MD and CEO, Fino Payments Bank, on whether the bank would need any further capital in the next two years post the IPO.
The bank said since the time of its inception around `180 crore was invested in technology. “The uniqueness of our technology is the way we have built up, it is very simple and intuitive which can work on a very low network as well. So the technology interfaces which we have build again brings the uniqueness to Fino,” Gupta said, adding the bank had built up many products with its partners and will continue to build up more products with partners.
To a questions on has the Fino Payments Bank reached the scale that it is going to take the next step to becoming a small finance bank (SFB), Gupta said right now the bank is not focussing on the conversion as the focus is on the payments bank.
“Payments bank itself offers a lot of opportunities. If I look at some of the products that we had started about a year back or may be in there for a couple of years, there is still a strong rope of growth which is there. We have set up a highway of infrastructure of around 7.7 lakh merchants. We are going to scale more with those merchants additions as well as getting more and more customers on to the infrastructure which is there.
So for the growth of the payment ecosystem is itself is a big driver for the next couple of years. SFB is an optionality which is there with us and may be at a relevant point of time when that optionality really crystallises, may be in another year or nine months down the line, we will decide what to with that optionality,” he pointed out.
FPBL had turned profitable at the operating level in FY2019-20. Notably, Fino Paytech (FPL) is backed by marquee investors like Blackstone, ICICI Group, Intel Capital Corporation, Bharat Petroleum, HAV3 Holdings (Mauritius) Limited and World Bank arm International Finance Corporation (IFC), amongst others.
Axis Capital, CLSA India, ICICI Securities, and Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) are the book running lead manager to the offer.