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Microcap fintech BNPL player Ovanti (ASX:OVT), currently a penny stock (which saw no change in price Wednesday and very low volumes), has revived its nearly 12-month-long plans to list on the Nasdaq, informing the market it continues to speak with multiple Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) operators.
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SPACs are an American phenomenon that can be sometimes controversial because they more or less offer companies a ‘shortcut’ to listing on Wall Street, maybe or maybe not bypassing what would otherwise be closer scrutiny from the SEC were the companies to try and start from scratch.
Current U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire and former investment banker, basically helped bring the SPAC to the fore – right before the GFC.
At any rate, that’s just a bit of market history. But it may also indicate the pressure Ovanti faces with a market cap of $37M and nearly 5 billion shares on issue – at a price of 0.8cps. While one-year returns are up 100%, daily volumes on Wednesday just before 1pm AEST reflected $90K worth of trades.
And a somewhat healthy-looking four-week liquidity average is distorted by the impact of a market release Ovanti put out just under a month ago, when it struck a deal with U.S.-based BNPL player Shift4 (as in ‘pay-in-4’, which is essentially the Afterpay model). Shift4 is listed on the NYSE, adding a certain legitimacy to the nature of the relationship, which is minted in a four-year agreement that sees OVT supplying its tech to the former; though, that hasn’t done much for the price since.
And one needs to ask why it’s taken nearly a year for OVT to continue having meetings with SPACs, given that SPACs are already renowned for being somewhat ‘all-are-welcome’ when it comes to companies looking to publicly list. But there are reasons that some Ovanti holders were excited on the HotCopper forums.
BNPL has come back to the fore in the U.S. with the recent listing of Klarna, which was well received (but now sits -8% WoW at US$45.42/sh.) Make of that what you will; the big takeaway for the sector is that it was the largest IPO of 2025.
OVT last traded at 0.8cps.
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