Sydney-based alternatives investments platform iPartners, which is chaired by former Telstra chair Bob Mansfield, is bucking the trend in the tech sector with a $20 million raising underway via stockbroker Wilsons.iPartners has hired Wilsons to show the deal to a handful of investors, with expectations of a capital top-up at a $100 million-plus valuation.
The business has three units - capital markets, funds management and white-labelled solutions - that were in line to pull in a combined $20 million revenue this year at a 10 per cent to 20 per cent EBITDA margin. That would put its $100 million odd valuation at anywhere between 25-times to 50-times EBITDA, at a time when bigger listed comps like HUB24 and Netwealth have sold off amid rising interest rates and slow client flows. HUB24 traded at 50-times on Thursday, a long way off the 82-times average for 2022.
However, iPartners believes investors would be happy with its $100 million valuation because it ended 2022 with a big uptick in flows and clocked its best January numbers across its six-year history. It has raised $2.3 billion on its platform, with a big chunk coming in the past year.
Its capital markets business’s clients have included labour hire company WorkPac, pub investor Harvest Hotels and BNPL player Procuret. The funds management business sells yield-focused products and the white-labelled product, which it pitched as a Saas product, lets businesses set up their own fund-raising portals. The latter has been used by