Opera, developer of the eponymous web browser, has increased its stake in OPay from 6.4% to 9.5%.
This comes two years after Opera, in June 2021, sold off 29% of its stake in OPay for $31.1 million.
Earlier in 2022, OPay bought Nanobank, a fintech company headquartered in the Cayman Islands, for an undisclosed sum. At the time, Opera had a stake worth $127.1 million in Nanobank, a sum that OPay agreed to pay in eight quarterly instalments.
This year, however, Opera agreed to convert its fees into OPay shares. By choosing OPay shares instead of cash, Opera settled for $35.9 million less than the book value of its investment in Nanobank, leaving the internet brand with a net fair value of $76.3 million, as of year end 2022.
“The settlement was based on the valuation applied in the transaction as well as an estimate for the value of Nanobank’s remaining business. Opera has stepped into the relevant provisions of the sales agreement, including potential adjustments depending on the business performance. Consequently, Opera will report the value of its increased OPay ownership based on a weighted set of scenarios for the performance of the sold business,” the company statement reads.
Opera may have increased its OPay stake, but it doesn’t appear to want to keep it. It already sold almost all its stake in the fintech previously, and this time, it has marked its OPay ownership as “held for sale”, noting that it is banking on the value of said shares going up
