Pepper Money officially lists on ASX

Normal settlement basis trading is scheduled to start on Thursday (27 May).

Under the IPO, the company will issue 173.2 million new shares at an offer price of $2.89 per share to raise cash proceeds of $500.1 million. 

Following completion of the IPO, the company will have 439.5 million shares on issue and a market capitalisation of approximately $1.3 billion at the offer price. 

Speaking about the listing on the ASX, Pepper Money CEO Mario Rehayem said: “I would like to welcome our new shareholders to the register. We have been delighted with the support and interest we have received throughout this process from a wide range of institutional and retail investors. 

“We will continue to focus on growing our business and to deliver on our purpose of helping people to succeed by concentrating on underserved customer segments via our multi-channel distribution channel and cascading credit model.”  

More products expected to come

According to the non-bank lender, funds raised by the IPO will be used to provide financial flexibility to pursue further growth opportunities and strengthen Pepper Money’s balance sheet by enabling the partial repayment of an existing bridge facility and partial repayment of the existing shareholder loan. 

The non-bank currently has approximately $15 billion in assets under management from $32.3 billion of originations, including $10.7 billion in outstanding mortgage loans to customers originated or acquired by Pepper Money, $2.6 billion in asset finance loans and $1.7 billion in loans that Pepper Money services for third-party clients.  

Speaking to The Adviser earlier this month about the move to list, Pepper Money CEO Mario Rehayem said that while the IPO process had taken some time to organise, the lender already had “quite a number of new products in the pipeline ready to roll out to the broker market and to the asset introducer division once listed”.

He said: “We’re really looking forward to expanding the level of products that we had for mortgages, for auto finance, for both our Australian and New Zealand groups ... more products that are going to be designed around serving that underserved segments of the market.”

According to Mr Rehayem, most of the product innovation has “come from broker focus groups, and introducer focus groups”.

He elaborated: “They’ve been advising us of the constant friction points that they have in dealing with either banks or other lenders... [Things like] turnaround times, consistently changing goalposts, or credit appetite without advising.

“We’ve been very consistent, not only with our market-leading turnaround times for the last four years, but we’re very transparent around our credit appetite, where we play and where we don’t. And that is something that brokers and introducers really respect because it doesn’t leave them red-faced in front of their customers when recommending a product, they know where we stand at all points.”

He told The Adviser earlier this month: “So, for us, the IPO and listing just means more continuity, sustainability and really growing organically on leveraging off our amazing brokers and introducers.

“I want to take time to thank all of our brokers, aggregator groups and introducers for continually [supporting] Pepper to be the leading non-bank lender in the country.

“Milestones like these cannot be achieved without their support, and we are very thankful, appreciative and extremely humbled with the level of support we received.”

[Related: Pepper to ‘widen’ product and channel following IPO]