By Miho Uranaka and Echo Wang
TOKYO/NEW YORK, March 11 (Reuters) – The initial public offering of SoftBank’s PayPay is likely to price around the low end of its marketing range as war in the Middle East roils markets, two people familiar with the matter said.
PayPay’s order book was more than five times oversubscribed and has now closed with pricing to be finalised after U.S. market hours on Wednesday, one of the people said.
The Japanese payment app operator was offering 55 million American depositary shares, priced $17 to $20 apiece, a filing this month showed, targeting a valuation of up to $13.4 billion.
The people declined to be identified as the information is not public. PayPay declined to comment.
Tencent, Ant Group’s Alipay, and Alphabet’s Google have committed to invest in the IPO, one of the people said.
The companies did not respond to requests for comment.
PayPay has played a central role in encouraging Japanese consumers to move away from a preference for cash by offering rebates on its payments app.
It has over 70 million registered users.
However, the company has had a bumpy path to an IPO. Its IPO roadshow was initially postponed after markets were jolted by conflict in the Middle East, Reuters reported last week.
PayPay had already postponed the IPO last year during the U.S. government shutdown, which disrupted regulatory processes and delayed regulatory filing.
Despite recent volatility, the U.S. IPO market is expected to rebound sharply this year. Goldman Sachs has forecast proceeds could quadruple to a record $160 billion in 2026, with potential debuts including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Anthropic.
PayPay would mark the first U.S. listing of a SoftBank majority investment since the blockbuster IPO of Arm.
SoftBank took the chip designer public in 2023 at a valuation of $54.5 billion, and its market capitalisation has since risen to almost $130 billion.
Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Mizuho and Morgan Stanley are joint book-running managers for the PayPay offering.
PayPay plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “PAYP”. Reuters first reported its plans for a U.S. listing in 2023.
(Reporting by Miho Uranaka and Echo Wang; Writing by Sam Nussey; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee, Christopher Cushing and Jacqueline Wong)
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