Nigerian owned media based company, IROKO is aiming to raise between $20 million and $30 million via an Initial Public Offer (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange within the next 12 months.
According to TheAfricaReport, IROKO is seeking a map capitalisation of $100million and it has chosen to raise the funds from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) Alternative Investment Market because the value is small for the primary market. The Alternative Investment Market is a sub-market of the LSE and is built specifically for small-cap companies
Jason had hinted last year that he would explore a listing on the London Stock Exchange once IROKOtv gets to 1m+ subscribers. He said he wanted to raise cash as the IROKOtv approaches its 10th anniversary.
Founded by Jason Njoku and Bastian Gotter in 2011, IROKO has the largest online catalogue of Nigerian (Nollywood) films. It caters principally to the international market, primarily the U.S and the U.K. 80% of IROKO’s revenue comes from outside Africa.
In December 2015, Jason Njoku of iROKO sealed a deal with Canal+ launch a mobile SVOD service in Francophone Africa. This deal gave birth to iROKO+ which is almost 1,800 hrs of French dubbed Nollywood, Telenovelas and African series.
In 2016, Jason Njoku’s iROKO raised $19m in content development and in capital funding, through multiple deals from Canal+ and Kinnevik AB.
Bastian left IROKO in 2017 leaving Jason to oversee the operations of the business.
In 2019, IROKO sold its African film and television studio ROK to Vivendi’s Canal+ for an undisclosed amount. Founded by Mary Njoku, wife of IROKOtv CEO Jason Njoku, ROK studio was created to provide original Nollywood content for IROKOtv.
Jason Njoku in his interview with Techcrunch stated that $10 million to $15 million of the funds from the IPO will be for corporate development; the rest will be secondaries for shareholders.
“As a private company, IROKO’s valuation was never priced above $70 million so anything in our target range wouldn’t be a down round at all. Especially if you consider in that time we exited ROK for close to the total amount of capital we raised for IROKO; we have returned $11 million to early investors and shareholders already. We still have material capital left from the ROK-Canal+ acquisition coming in every 6 months until 2023.”
Commenting on the effect of the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, there was a 70% drop in subscription numbers in the African market, and in May, 28% of the company’s staff went on unpaid leave. Interestingly in the same period, its international subscribers grew by 200%, hitting a $25-30 ARPU range.
Jason said he was listing on the London Stock Exchange because the Nigerian Stock Exchange or other local exchanges do not have a history of listing early-stage tech companies.
