Mynt’s $844 Mn IPO Puts ASEAN’s Fintech Exit Market to the Test

ASEAN’s venture-backed technology companies have spent years searching for credible public-market exits. In the Philippines, GCash parent Mynt is preparing one of the region’s most closely watched listings, but the structure of its $844 Mn initial public offering reveals as much about investors seeking liquidity as it does about the company’s ambitions.

Established in 2015 as Globe Telecom’s fintech business, Mynt later brought in Ayala Corporation and Ant Financial, the Alipay owner now known as Ant Group, as strategic investors in 2017.

Mynt has priced its IPO at P6.60 a share, valuing the group at about P441.5 Bn ($7 Bn). The P53 Bn base offer is set to become the Philippines’ second-largest IPO, behind foodmaker Monde Nissin’s P55.89 Bn listing in 2021. If the overallotment option is fully exercised, proceeds could reach P60.9 Bn ($970 Mn), setting a new record.  

But the most revealing number is not the headline valuation. Of the 8.03 Bn shares on offer, existing shareholders are selling about 6.42 Bn. Only 1.61 Bn represent new equity issued by Mynt.

At the final offer price, that translates into roughly P42.4 Bn in gross proceeds for selling shareholders and P10.6 Bn for the company, before expenses. The additional 1.20 Bn shares available under the overallotment option are also secondary shares.

In other words, about four-fifths of the base transaction is designed to transfer existing ownership, not to finance fresh expansion.

For a regional technology industry still grappling with weak exit opportunities, the distinction is significant. Mynt is not approaching public markets as a loss-making startup seeking capital to establish its business model. It already operates an established payments network, has demonstrated profitability and is offering earlier investors a route to monetise part of their holdings.

The IPO is, therefore, as much a test of public-market liquidity for private technology investors as it is a capital-raising exercise.

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Who Is Cashing Out

The sellers are mostly the financial investors that backed Mynt’s growth phase. Its draft prospectus names funds, including ASP Philippines (managed by Bow Wave Capital), New York-based Insight Partners, vehicles of US PE firm Warburg Pincus and Advanced New Technologies, an Ant-affiliated vehicle. The PSE’s final offer notice identifies the selling entities but does not provide a fund-by-fund breakdown of the shares being sold.

Bow Wave’s investment, disclosed in January 2021, valued Mynt at close to $1 Bn. Warburg Pincus and Insight Partners joined later that year, in a $300 Mn round that valued the company at more than $2 Bn. At $7 Bn, the IPO prices Mynt at about seven times Bow Wave’s entry valuation and more than three times the 2021 round.

The strategic shareholders are staying in. Globe, Ant International Technologies (Singapore) Holding, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and AM 50 Ventures, an Ayala-Mitsubishi Corporation joint venture, are not listed as sellers. However, Advanced New Technologies, a separate Ant-affiliated investment vehicle, is participating in the secondary sale.

Seven executives, including president and chief executive Martha Sazon and others, are selling just over 1% of the secondary shares. Under the PSE’s listing notice, about 44.6 Bn shares will be held in escrow for 180 days and another 43.98 Mn for 365 days, assuming the overallotment option is fully exercised.

The push for an exit has been building for some time. In 2024, Mynt chairman Ernest Cu, a former Globe chief executive, said there was no urgency to list but that some investors wanted liquidity. Mynt also waited for regulators to cut the minimum public float for large listings, a change that, according to Reuters, spares existing shareholders heavy dilution.

How Mynt Arrived at a $7 Bn Valuation

The final price followed an institutional bookbuilding process that Mynt said was oversubscribed multiple times, drawing substantial demand beyond its cornerstone commitments.

More than 20 international and domestic investors have committed about P36.5 Bn ahead of the public offer, representing nearly 69% of the base transaction. The cornerstone group includes funds and accounts managed by investment firms such as BlackRock, Capital Research, T. Rowe Price and HSBC Global Asset Management, alongside Philippine institutions.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector investment arm, also approved a proposed P4.4 Bn ($70 Mn) investment in Mynt shares through the IPO.

Yet institutional demand has not reached the valuation Mynt reportedly sought earlier this year. Reuters reported in May that the company was targeting at least $8 Bn. The final offer values it at about $7 Bn, although that remains well above the $5 Bn valuation set in 2024, when Ayala and MUFG agreed to invest.

There has also been confusion over the P10 indicative maximum disclosed in Mynt’s original regulatory filing. The final P6.60 price is 34% below that ceiling. But the company’s chief finance officer, Evelyn Ng, clarified at an October 6 investor briefing that P10 was an administrative maximum required for the listing application, not the price at which the company expected to list.

The distinction is important. The final offer price was determined through institutional bookbuilding, not by reducing a previously agreed offer price.

At about 25.7 times its reported 2025 net income, Mynt’s offer also gives investors an earnings-based measure to evaluate its valuation, unlike many earlier technology listings that relied heavily on revenue multiples and expectations of future profitability.

Beyond the Wallet Business

The investment case rests on a business that has moved well beyond digital payments.

Mynt’s GCash platform reported 39.1 Mn monthly active users (MAU) in 2025 and processed P17 Tn in gross transaction value during the year. In the three months ended June 2026, MAU rose to 41.5 Mn, about 56% of the Philippine adult population, according to IFC disclosures.

The group generated approximately P79.8 Bn in revenue and P17.2 Bn in net income in 2025. In the first half of 2026, revenue rose 10.4% YoY, while net income grew 7.3%, according to Reuters.

These figures underpin a different investment proposition from the high-growth, loss-making fintech companies that dominated the region’s earlier funding cycles.

Through G-Xchange, Mynt operates the GCash wallet, while Fuse Financing provides digital lending products. The ecosystem also offers access to savings, investment products and insurance, allowing the company to develop additional revenue streams through an established customer base.

The shift is especially evident when it comes to lending. Fuse reported cumulative loan disbursements of P362 Bn by the end of 2025, supported by more than 10.5 Mn unique borrowers. The cumulative disbursement figure measures loans extended over time, not the value of loans outstanding.

Mynt has identified expanding digital financial services, particularly its lending business, as a use for the fresh capital raised through the IPO.

This creates an important distinction between the company’s established distribution advantage and the risks of its next growth stage.

Payments have given Mynt scale, recurring customer engagement and access to a broad financial services market. Lending offers an opportunity to generate more revenue from those relationships, but also increases exposure to credit quality, borrower repayment behaviour and underwriting performance. Therefore, investors must evaluate how effectively Mynt turns its user base into profitable financial relationships without taking on excessive credit risk, which will determine the company’s next valuation phase.

When Wallet Users Become Shareholders

Mynt has also taken an unusual approach to retail participation by allowing eligible GCash users to subscribe to its shares through GStocks PH, operated by licensed broker AB Capital Securities. The minimum subscription through the platform is 100 shares or P660 at the offer price. Local small investors can also subscribe through PSE EASy, the exchange’s own electronic allocation platform.

The public offer is open from October 6 to 12. Eligible GStocks PH users subscribing on October 6 and 7 could receive real-time allocation of their first 100 shares, subject to the programme’s conditions and share availability. Subsequent subscriptions through to October 12 follow the regular allocation process, without guaranteed allotment.

The initiative lets Mynt use its existing financial platform to broaden retail access to its listing. It also highlights the distinction between customers and shareholders.

A widely used consumer brand may generate retail interest, but familiarity with a payment app does not eliminate the risks of equity ownership. Nor does the convenience of digital subscriptions determine the price at which shares will trade after listing.

The actual breadth of retail participation will become clearer when final allocations are disclosed.

Early signs point to strong demand. Total demand is exceeding historical levels for Philippine IPOs, said Ed Francisco, president of BDO Capital & Investment, one of the deal’s local bookrunners. The cornerstone commitments of P36.5 Bn cover a substantial proportion of the base offer. GCash said the institutions backing the deal have also committed to buying shares left unsold after the offer period.

For now, institutions overwhelmingly support the transaction. The PSE estimates Mynt’s public float at 12.07% after the base offer, potentially rising to 13.87% if the overallotment is fully exercised.  

That gives the company access to public capital while leaving most of its equity outside the immediate public float. Mynt is set to become the first company to list under the Philippine securities regulator’s rules introduced this year, which let issuers valued at P200 Bn or more float as little as 12%, below the standard 15%.

The exchange’s benchmark PSEi index generally requires a 20% public float, but revised rules taking effect at the February 2027 index review will lower the threshold to 15% for companies valued at P250 Bn or more. Mynt’s planned public float remains below even the revised requirement.

A Regional Exit, Not Yet a Regional Recovery

Mynt’s IPO also arrives at an important moment for the Philippine equity market. Companies raised only $227.1 Mn through equity transactions in the country through September 29, down 71% from the same period a year earlier, according to LSEG data reported by Reuters.

In fact, the Philippines accounted for just 1.7% of the $13.06 Bn raised across Southeast Asia’s equity markets during the first nine months of 2026.

Against that backdrop, Mynt’s P53 Bn offer adds substantially to market activity. At about $844 Mn, it is worth more than three times what Philippine companies raised from equity deals in the year to September 29. It also demonstrates that a profitable technology platform with a large domestic customer base can still attract major global institutions.

The choice of venue also matters. Singapore-based Sea and Grab, which also run payments businesses, are listed in the US, not at home. Sazon has said the Philippines was the natural venue for Mynt’s debut.

But the transaction should not be mistaken for evidence that ASEAN’s broader technology IPO market has reopened. Mynt has advantages many venture-backed businesses still lack, including substantial scale, a recognisable consumer franchise, diversified financial-services offerings and an existing earnings record. Its cornerstone investors have also committed a large proportion of the transaction before the public offer closes.

The more consequential test will come when investors begin trading the shares without the framework of an underwritten IPO and pre-arranged institutional allocations.

The retail subscription period closes on October 12, with Mynt scheduled to debut on the Philippine Stock Exchange under the ticker GCASH on October 20.

By then, the company should achieve two immediate objectives: providing liquidity to existing investors and raising fresh capital for expansion.

Whether the listing becomes a benchmark for ASEAN’s next generation of fintech exits will depend on what public investors are prepared to pay after the debut, and whether Mynt can sustain earnings growth as its business moves further from payments into credit and other financial services.

Also read:

Inside Mynt’s Record-Breaking Public Listing

GCash Parent Mynt’s Record IPO Draws Global Funds as Early Backers Sell Down

Mynt Prices IPO at P6.60 a Share, Implying $7 Bn Valuation, Sources Say