Stripe is arranging a tender offer – a formal process that involves going to existing shareholders and offering to buy some of their shares – at a valuation of at least $140bn, tech sector publication Axios reported late on Monday.
At that price, Stripe is about four times more valuable than Ryanair and the Irish brothers’ combined stake in the business, understood to be around 20pc, would be worth in the order of $28bn – although there is little to no prospect of them realising that by actually selling out.
The new valuation is up from $107bn when a similar transaction was executed only last year. It would indicate that a small stake in the business, which has headquarters in San Francisco and in Dublin, held by Irish taxpayers through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) is now worth around $73m versus the $50m invested in 2021.
At that time, Stripe was valued at $95bn but the valuation tumbled to as low as $50bn in 2023 before rebounding.
Valuations of the Collison brothers’ business are opaque because the shares do not trade over any public exchange. That makes price transparency and even price discovery more challenging.
In recent years, Stripe has executed a number of tender offers that have shed more light though, buying shares from current or former staff or from investors using either fresh funds or its own financial resources.
Those deals have helped put cash in the hands of employees even without the company floating on a stock exchange.
Today’s News in 90 – Wednesday February 11
Stripe declined to comment on the tender offer, but the move will be seen as evidence the company is in no rush for an initial public offering (IPO), which is consistent with comments last month from John Collison, who told the Bloomberg news agency that Stripe was “still not in any rush” to go public.
While Stripe doesn’t publish a full set of financial accounts, the Collisons’ annual letter to investors and the wider market last year said the business became profitable in 2024 and that they expected profitability to continue.
They also flagged that businesses using their digital payments platform had generated a staggering $1.4tn in total payment volumes in 2024, up 38pc from the previous year. That is likely to be up again when their next letter issues, as a growing share of global commerce shifts online.
Stripe cut around 300 jobs last year, but also acquired businesses in the crypto space including Bridge, a ‘platform’ that helps clients create so-called stablecoins, and crypto wallet provider Privy.
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