CAIRO, Reuters – Egypt’s state-owned payments firm efinance for Digital and Financial Investments stated on Sunday that they would sell up to 14.5% in an initial public offer in the fourth quarter in 2021.

In a statement, efinance stated that it was the only entity authorized to manage the financial network of the government, which includes processing payment settlements and collections transactions.

This sale is just one of many planned this year.

Egypt’s first major bank sale since 2006 was the May 51% purchase of Arab Investment Bank (AIB), which Egypt owned.

Although the government had announced that they would be selling minority stakes in almost two dozen companies in 2018, those sales have been delayed numerous times by market downturns, and most recently by the coronavirus epidemic.

According to e-finance, it plans to list 177.8M new shares on the stock market and 80 Million shares currently held by shareholders. These shares will be available for retail and institutional investors.

According to the 2019 annual report of e-finance, three state-owned banks are among its shareholders: National Investment Bank with 63.64% and National Bank of Egypt with 9.09%.

The Egyptian Banks Company is a payments provider led by the central banking. Another 9.09% are held by Egyptian Company for Investment Projects.

According to e-finance, the revenue amounted to 1.23 billion Egyptian Pounds ($78 million) in 2020, and 904,000,000 pounds in 2021. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% for 2018-20.

According to the statement, sale approvals and market conditions are required.

($1 = 15.7300 Egyptian pounds)