Finder keen on IPO as it steps up Asia push

A potential blockbuster tech IPO is on the cards for financial comparison platform Finder.

Frank Restuccia, right, with fellow Finder co-founder Fred Schebesta. ‘We’ve never taken any external equity, and we have no debt in the company.’

A potential blockbuster tech IPO is on the cards for financial comparison platform Finder, with its Sydney-based young rich-lister executives looking to make the most of a bumper 2020 and frothy market conditions.

Co-CEO and founder Frank Restuccia said that while the timing was still an open question, the company — which wants to be the world’s biggest comparison website — was moving quickly towards a likely ASX listing “in the near future”.

“We obviously have been keeping a close eye on the markets and definitely there are some great opportunities for us to go down that path,” Mr Restuccia said. “We’ve never taken any external equity, and we have no debt in the company, so we’re well positioned to look at those types of opportunities.

“We are preparing ourselves for that as a possibility in the near future. We haven’t locked in any sort of firm dates yet, but we’re definitely exploring and ­preparing ourselves internally for more of a public stance in the ­future,” Mr Restuccia added.

The comments come as a buoyant sharemarket reveals a strong appetite for raising capital in corporate Australia.

If successful, the company would look to join the likes of Airtasker, Adore Beauty and Booktopia in wooing local investors keen to back fast-growing global tech businesses.

Airtasker, which listed with a market capitalisation of $266.9m, debuted last month at 65c a share, before jumping to $1.75 within its first days of trade. It closed on Wednesday at $1.40, amid strong support for the tech sector.

Finder’s platform for comparing banks, insurance and telcos is now live in more than 80 countries, with 10 million consumers using its services every month. It is growing at 100 per cent year on year in the US, where the company has a staff of 80. Finder now has its sights set on being the top comparison website globally, starting with an aggressive step into Southeast Asia.

The company is buying Asian rival GoBear for an undisclosed sum, picking up its trademark and digital assets including domains, website content and social channels across Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The GoBear brand will continue to operate via social media and email channels, but the website content will form part of finder.com and its local services.

“GoBear have established an awesome brand in the Southeast Asian markets,” Mr Restuccia said. “We’ve got a presence there already, but we’ve always had a view that we can be a market leader in those regions, and when we dug a bit deeper we realised they would supercharge our growth into Asia and complement what we’ve already built. This will give us a good kick down field.”

Mr Restuccia, who co-founded Finder in 2006 with Fred Schebesta, said Southeast Asia in particular had a lot of unbanked cus­tomers, making it a prime opportunity for quick growth.

“We think we can pick up a lot of those unbanked customers on the way through, and they’ll be able to access all the great services we’re already offering here in Australia and in the UK and America as well, through their mobile devices,” he said.

“We see this as being a global app, which will then be localised to these markets.”

He added that while the terms of the transaction could not be disclosed, COVID-19 had hit GoBear hard.

“They were quite exposed to travel, and we’ve been able to ride through the pandemic in good shape,” he said.

“We’re in a position to keep growing and we felt this acquisition represented good value.

“They have poured something like $US97m into their business over the last six years, and we didn’t purchase the assets for anywhere near that amount, but we feel there’s a lot of inherent value in the brand and the assets they’ve built, and we can get a great outcome for the previous and current customers of GoBear in the ­region.”

Finder had tongues wagging recently when it sought accreditation from the ACCC to be an Open Banking data recipient under new Consumer Data Right (CDR) rules, but Mr Restuccia ­denied speculation that Finder was looking to become a financial provider.

“We’re very clear about what our role is,” he said. “We’re there to bring together the products and services for our customers, and we’re not in the business of manufacturing or building our own bespoke offers.

“We want to be that centrepiece in people’s financial lives, and where we’re heading is we’re going to be true to form and be that platform to help people make better decisions.”