Pecohub OPay has withdrawn its planned $304 million initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), only hours after pricing the deal. The company blamed a regulatory inquiry in a foreign jurisdiction it has not named.
Earlier on Friday, October 30, 2026, OPay had priced 16 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at $19 each, the bottom of its $19 to $21 range. That valued the company at about $4 billion, and its executives rang the NYSE opening bell. But the shares never began trading under the ticker “OPAY.”
In a statement carried by Reuters, OPay described the inquiry as relating to a jurisdiction “immaterial” to its core operations. It did not identify the regulator or say what the inquiry is about, but said it expects the matter to be resolved satisfactorily in the near future.
The company also said the development “should not be misconstrued as a reflection on the Company’s business performance, financial condition, operational integrity, or regulatory standing,” and that its operations, regulatory standing, and customer service in Nigeria and its other markets are unaffected.
OPay’s position shifted over the course of the day. In an earlier statement to ThisDay, the company said it was placing a temporary hold on trading while it secured a formal regulatory “No-Objection” connected to its US listing, a requirement it said falls outside Nigeria’s regulatory framework.
A later statement went further, saying the offering will not be completed and the ADSs will not begin trading as scheduled. The deal had been due to close on November 2.
The reversal comes at the very end of the listing process. The NYSE had certified its approval of OPay’s ADSs for listing on October 27, and Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Standard Bank, and CICC were among the underwriters.
The cancelled offering also affects deals built around it. When OPay set its price range on October 23, it disclosed that nine investors had indicated interest in up to $270 million of the shares, and that Stanbic Africa Holdings, part of South Africa’s Standard Bank Group, had agreed to buy up to $200 million in new shares through a concurrent private placement.
According to OPay’s amended prospectus, that placement depends on the IPO being completed. OPay’s statements did not address the placement, its partnership with Standard Bank, or its planned secondary listing on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).
SoftBank, whose entities held a 6.6% stake in OPay before the offering, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
