IN SHORT: Opera’s FY2025 annual filing values its 9.5% stake in OPay at $294.6 million, implying a total OPay valuation of $3.1 billion and assigning an 85% probability of an IPO within the next two years. OPay reported revenue of $614.8 million in 2025, up 28% year on year. The company serves over 50 million users in Nigeria and processes more than $12 billion in monthly transactions. No formal IPO filing has been made.
OPay, Nigeria’s dominant digital payments platform, has been valued at $3.1 billion by its largest disclosed shareholder and assigned an 85% probability of going public within two years. It is the clearest IPO signal yet for one of Africa’s most commercially successful fintechs, in a market that has been waiting years for a landmark African tech exit.
Opera Limited, which holds 9.5% of OPay and is listed on Nasdaq (OPRA), disclosed the valuation in its FY2025 annual report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The implied valuation represents a significant step up from the $2.7 billion implied by Opera’s 2024 carrying value of $258.3 million, and more than 50% above the $2 billion valuation assigned when OPay raised its $400 million Series C from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 in 2021.
- The Opera filing used a discount rate of 18.5% plus a 10% discount for lack of marketability, and assumes a liquidity event within nine months to two years. The 85% IPO probability figure is an explicit internal model assumption, not speculation. It is the probability Opera assigned to a liquidity event in arriving at its fair value estimate. The filing notes that “the fair value of the OPay investment is highly uncertain and may result in material volatility in our results of operations.”
- OPay’s operational metrics underpin the valuation. The company reported FY2025 revenue of $614.8 million, up 28% year on year. Over 50 million users in Nigeria hold OPay accounts. Monthly transaction volume exceeds $12 billion. The platform processes payments, facilitates cash withdrawals through its POS agent network, offers savings via OWealth, and has expanded into lending. By customer account count, OPay is among the largest financial institutions in Nigeria.
- The management team assembled ahead of the IPO window includes Lars Boilesen, former Opera CEO, as co-CEO alongside founder Yahui Zhou, and James Perry as CFO. Perry spent over 25 years at Citigroup, where his experience was explicitly in navigating public market transactions. The signal in that hire is unmistakable to anyone who has watched pre-IPO management team construction.
- A regulatory tailwind arrived on April 1, 2026. The CBN issued a directive restricting point-of-sale agents to work with only one financial institution. Analysts expect the rule to consolidate POS market share toward the largest and most stable platforms. OPay, with its extensive agent network and broad user base, is expected to be a primary beneficiary as smaller operators lose the ability to work with multiple banks and fintechs.
- Opera’s stake now represents approximately 26% of the company’s total equity value on its balance sheet, making OPay the dominant single asset in Opera’s reported financial position. Without the OPay uplift, Opera’s reported net income would have been approximately 6% lower in FY2025. Opera’s incentive to push toward a liquidity event is clear.
- A US listing is the most frequently cited destination. Analysts project a possible IPO window within 9 to 15 months at a valuation potentially exceeding $5 billion as the company matures. A secondary listing on the Nigerian Exchange or another African exchange remains a possibility the company has flagged in principle. A successful US listing at scale would be the most significant African tech capital markets event since Jumia’s NYSE debut in 2019, and potentially larger given OPay’s revenue and profitability profile.
Opera said in the filing: “OPay has demonstrated strong commercial performance, with 50 million+ registered users in Nigeria and monthly transaction volumes exceeding $12 billion.”
The Bigger Picture: Africa’s tech ecosystem has been fundraising at scale for years and exiting rarely. OPay getting to a public market would change that narrative. It is a genuinely large, profitable, growing business built in and for Africa’s most important consumer market. A successful IPO would not just return capital to OPay’s investors. It would validate the entire thesis that African digital financial services businesses can reach the scale and profitability metrics required for institutional public market investors. Flutterwave, Moniepoint, Wave and others are watching. The door that opens for OPay potentially opens for all of them.
Source: Weetracker / Opera FY2025 SEC filing, April 2026
