Special: Business payments business AvidXchange preps for IPO, eyeing $7 billion valuation – sources

(Reuters) – AvidXchange Inc has hired financial commitment banking companies such as Goldman Sachs Group to lead preparations for an preliminary community offering which may price the company payments processor at additional than $7 billion, individuals common with the issue explained on Tuesday.

Backed by investors which includes Mastercard Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc co-founder Peter Thiel, AvidXchange presents software that automates payments, invoicing and accounting for tiny and mid-sized companies.

COVID-19 lockdown measures have forced scaled-down providers to embrace electronic remedies for every day, paper-large jobs, a craze which has boosted firms this sort of as AvidXchange.

Seeking to capitalize on that momentum, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm aims to listing on the inventory market place in the 2nd quarter. As nicely as Goldman, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of The us Corp, and Barclays PLC have been retained as IPO arrangers, in accordance to two of the sources.

Those people concerned in the offer believe that AvidXchange could be really worth amongst $5 billion and $7 billion in an IPO, and perhaps as significantly as $10 billion given new strong trader hunger for payments businesses, the sources reported.

This would be noticeably better than the $2 billion AvidXchange was valued at in its most modern non-public fundraising round in April, 2020.

The sources spoke on ailment of anonymity as the facts is non-public. AvidXchange declined to remark. Spokespeople for the quartet of banking institutions possibly declined to remark or did not immediately reply to remark requests.

Started in 2000, AvidXchange procedures all-around 12 million payments annually with a whole value of $140 billion, in accordance to its internet site.

Values of money technology companies have boomed in the last 12 months, both for general public and private names. AvidXchange’s outlined peers, Invoice.com Holdings Inc and Coupa Computer software Inc, have superior a lot more than 300{f13b67734a7459ff15bce07f17c500e58f5449212eae0f7769c5b6fbcf4cc0c4} and 89{f13b67734a7459ff15bce07f17c500e58f5449212eae0f7769c5b6fbcf4cc0c4} respectively over that time period.

Before this month, Swedish payments agency Klarna announced a new funding round at approximately triple its valuation from when it tapped private investors in September.

Reporting by David French in New York Modifying by Alexandra Hudson