Aim’s Monitise leans towards Nasdaq listing

Monitise, which provides the technology behind the mobile money services of most UK retail banks, says it is considering a float in the US as interest in mobile banking increases and the company begins to outgrow its quotation on Aim.

The London company revealed on Monday that it had tripled revenues for the six months to the end of December, and raised its full-year forecasts in the latest sign of the speed at which the mobile banking industry is growing.

“Aim has been good to us, we have raised money on Aim five times, but at some point we are going to hit a ceiling,” said Alastair Lukies, chief executive, who appointed Goldman Sachs as financial adviser to the company this month.

“No decisions have been made yet, but our aspiration is to be the biggest company in this space. We have to ensure we can continue to grow,” he said.

The company has seen its stock market valuation increase more than 40 per cent to £295m in the past year.

Mr Lukies said he was still undecided between London’s main market and Nasdaq, but hinted that he was leaning towards the US where valuations for technology companies are typically much higher.

“The way people attribute value to a company in the technology sector is completely different in the US,” he said. “And look at the fact that we have had 110 technology floats in the past three years, and 107 of them have been in the US.”

Monitise, which was spun out of Morse, the UK IT services company in 2007, is being buoyed by a wave of interest in providing payment and banking services over mobile phones and has benefited from a strong relationship with Visa.

The company is providing technology for Visa’s debit processing service in the US, which will allow bank customers to check their balances and transfer funds via their mobile phones. Visa DPS reaches about 70 per cent of US consumers.

Visa is vying with companies including Google and Telefónica to launch mobile wallet services. Analysts at Jupiter Research estimate that about $240bn of transactions were made over mobile devices in 2011. That amount is expected to triple over the next five years.

Monitise, which works with UK retailers including Carphone Warehouse and 250 US banks, says it handles about 480m transactions a year, up from 120m in 2010.

Sales grew to £15.8m, from £5.3m a year earlier, and the company raised its forecast for full-year revenues to £34m from £28m.

The company is still loss-making, due to the heavy costs of expansion, including into Asia.