TECNO MObile Valuation IPO — Computer Village, Ikeja

We’ve known for a while that Transsion, the king of Smartphones in Africa has had an IPO coming up where they plan to raise $400 Million which they say will help fund 6 projects in production and development.

Well, Bloomberg is reporting that the company has priced their Initial Public Offering at double the valuation of one of the world’s biggest companies. Which is a crazy thing!

“[Transsion has set] its IPO at 35.15 yuan a share, implying a trailing earnings multiple of 42.8 times, according to a filing published on Wednesday….. That compares with Apple’s 18.98 times and fellow rival Samsung Electronics Co.’s 9.92 times, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Fellow Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. is trading at 17.8 times estimated earnings for the next four quarters.” – Bloomberg.

What is clear is that on Star Boards, such as the Shanghai one on which the company is listing, there’s no valuation cap on companies going public. A Shenzhen company already set a record on the tech board with an IPO price that represented an earnings multiple of 467.51 times.

Being the largest seller of smartphones in Africa, Transsion isn’t a small company. It boasts of several sub-brands that each do really well in the different markets where they’re present. Some of the big sub-brands are the well known TECNO, Infinix, and itel, with the less known ones being Oraimo, Carlcare and Synix.

Last year, according to an IDC Report, the company commanded 34.3% of smartphones sold in Africa. They also sold 58.7% of feature phones in the market. Compare this to Samsung Electronics’ 22.6 per cent and Huawei Technologies’ 9.9 per cent in the smartphone segment, and you see just how big the company is. Remember, they now also sell phones in the Middle East, South East Asia region, and Latin America.

With this IPO, Transsion which remains largely unknown, could become a big name talked about, and bashed in equal measure. Remember, they’re a Chinese company, and the West has issues with Chinese tech companies – RE: Huawei.