Airtel Money slips below IPO offer price in $7 billion London debut

LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Airtel Money shares fell below their offer price on Friday, in a muted start to trading for the African mobile money service after a heavily oversubscribed initial public offering.

The IPO, ranked by Dealogic as London's largest listing since Fermi's dual listing in September 2025, had aimed for a valuation of around $7 billion for the sub-Saharan Africa-focused fintech.

After initially rising to £2.00, Airtel Money stock was trading at £1.93 per share, just below its £1.96 IPO price. 

The drop comes despite strong demand for the IPO, which was several times oversubscribed. The secondary sale raised about $703 million for existing shareholders who sold 270 million shares at a fixed price of £1.96 each.

Shares in Airtel Africa, the parent of Airtel Money which will remain the majority shareholder, were trading down 6% in London among a broad selloff of telecoms stocks after SpaceX acquired spectrum in the US, raising new competitive concerns.

Airtel Money, founded as Airtel Africa's mobile money service, provides transfers, bill payments and digital banking features on mobile phones to users in 13 countries, including Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania.

London-listed Airtel Africa is majority owned by Indian conglomerate Bharti Enterprises. Airtel Africa owned nearly 78% of Airtel Money before the IPO and had said it would remain a long-term shareholder. 

Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder of Airtel and founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, said in a statement that the listing was a "vote of confidence in the UK as an attractive global destination for investment".

Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said Airtel Money had been one of the most popular London IPOs ever among retail investors on its investment platform.

"Airtel Money's majority shareholder Airtel Africa has made investors big money since its stock market debut in 2019, with a 262% gain in value to £11.2 billion," he said. "Many people will be hoping for a repeat of this success with the new IPO."

Britain has simplified its listing rules to attract more issuers, after a decade in which London's stock market shrank as companies chased higher valuations abroad.

Several candidates in Europe and the US have delayed offerings amid interest rate rises and geopolitical uncertainty. 

(Reporting by Raechel Thankam Job in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Alexander Smith)