Egyptian fintech tycoon Mounir Nakhla's IPO draws 11 times demand from institutions

Egyptian fintech entrepreneur Mounir Nakhla has drawn heavy demand for the initial public offering of MNT-Halan's Egyptian business, with the institutional portion of the deal covered 11.2 times as investors from more than 10 countries placed orders before books closed this week.

MNT Tech Holding for Financial Investments, the Egyptian arm of the lending and payments group Nakhla founded, said the private tranche closed at the offer price of 24.50 Egyptian pounds ($0.47) a share. Excluding cornerstone investors, the tranche was covered 19.4 times, the company said. Orders came from more than 300 investors in Egypt, several Gulf states, the U.K., France, Switzerland and South Africa.

"We are delighted with the strong demand for MNT-Halan's IPO," Nakhla, the company's founder, chief executive officer and managing director, said in the statement. He added that "this level of interest reinforces our confidence in Egypt's capital markets."

A secondary sale by the parent

The offering is entirely secondary. MNT Investments B.V., the Netherlands-based parent of the group, is selling 320 million existing shares, or 20% of the Egyptian company, worth about 7.84 billion pounds ($150 million) at the offer price. Of those, 272 million shares went to institutions and 48 million are reserved for the public. Egypt's Commercial International Bank and London-based asset manager Redwheel are cornerstone investors and together took more than a third of the base offering, according to EnterpriseAM.

Retail demand has also been strong. By the close of trading on Oct. 12, individual investors had bid for about 128.8 million shares, worth roughly 3.16 billion pounds ($60 million), against a retail tranche valued at 1.18 billion pounds ($23 million), according to Egyptian Exchange screen data cited by EnterpriseAM. That put the public book at 2.68 times covered with sessions still remaining. The retail subscription closes on Oct. 15, and the shares are expected to start trading on the Egyptian Exchange in Cairo on Oct. 20.

At the offer price, the Egyptian business is valued at about 39.2 billion pounds ($750 million). BDO Keys, the independent financial adviser on the deal, set fair value at 25.92 pounds a share, which puts the IPO at a 5.5% discount. Nakhla defended the pricing at the EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum, telling the audience that "an IPO by definition is priced at a discount."

The prospectus allowed the parent to sell up to 80 million additional shares if demand was strong, which would have lifted the free float to 25%. No increase had been announced by the time the institutional book closed. After the offering, MNT Investments will put up to 4 billion pounds ($76 million) back into the Egyptian unit through a closed capital increase at the offer price. Nakhla has said the rest of the proceeds will fund the group's business in Turkey and an acquisition in an Arabic-speaking market he has not named.

EFG Hermes and Citigroup are joint global coordinators and bookrunners.

Only the Egyptian business is listing

Nakhla started the business in December 2009 as a microfinance lender and has since built it into one of Egypt's largest nonbank lenders, adding consumer instalment loans, small business lending and payments through the Halan app. The company serves customers through more than 1,200 outlets in 25 of Egypt's governorates. The listing covers only the Egyptian operations. The parent's businesses in Pakistan, where it owns a bank for micro and small businesses, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates stay private.

The Egyptian company had 1.9 million active customers and a gross loan book of 46.7 billion pounds ($893 million) as of June 30, up from 23 billion pounds at the end of 2023, according to prospectus figures summarized by Cairo brokerage Thndr. It reported revenue of 19.8 billion pounds ($379 million) and net profit of 1.98 billion pounds ($38 million) in 2025, and net profit of 910 million pounds ($17 million) in the first half of 2026.

The listing values the Egyptian arm below the $1.4 billion valuation the whole group reached in June, when Al Ahly Capital, the investment arm of state-owned National Bank of Egypt, led a funding round. GB Capital, part of Cairo-listed GB Corp, owns 42.9% of MNT Investments, while a vehicle linked to Abu Dhabi's International Holding Co. holds 20.8%, according to Thndr. The International Finance Corp. and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are also investors in the group.

The deal is being watched as a test of foreign appetite for Egyptian equities. EnterpriseAM described it this month as the only live IPO in the region at a time when the Gulf listings pipeline has stalled.