GCash says no IPO soon amid ‘tech winter’

Financial application GCash — operated by G-Xchange Inc. — on Monday dismissed any plans of an initial public offering (IPO) anytime soon, citing the lack of a market amid the “tech winter.”

In a briefing to discuss Globe Telecom Inc.’s latest financial earnings, GCash chief financial officer Tek Olano said the current market conditions are not conducive for the company to go public.

“I guess today you can consider the period as basically your tech winter, so the market’s not there for any listing, so it’s not actually the best time for an IPO,” he told reporters.

“What we’re doing now is we’re really using the time to continue to focus on growing the business, making sure we create value for the customers, making sure we build the digital ecosystem that’s needed so that when the time comes, we’ll be ready and we’ll be a very different company by then,” he added.

Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu last year said the company will go public “in time” as he cited public clamor, but noted that there is no timeline set for this so far.

The GCash application has some 69 million registered users across the country with a gross transaction value hitting over P3 trillion in the first half of the year, which it expects to reach P6 trillion by the end of the year.

The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mynt (Globe Fintech Innovations Inc.), and is the country’s first duacorn.

Globe ended the third quarter of the year with net earnings of P6.81 billion, up by 39% from P4.91 billion the same quarter last year. This brought the year-to-date earnings up 48% to P26.46 billion, as consolidated service revenues jumped by 3% to P118 billion.

Shares in Globe were trading down P48.00 or 2.09% at P2,252.00 apiece as of 11:55 a.m. on Monday. —KG, GMA Integrated News