Boutique Fintech investment bank FT Partners has kicked off a new service: Fintech equity research.
Over the years, the number of analysts actively following smaller, publicly listed firms have diminished. While there are various reasons for this decline, in the end equity research now tends to focus on larger, more established firms to the detriment of the smalls. The decision to add bespoke sell side research makes a lot of sense as FT Partners is already doing a lot of the heavy lifting in researching these firms.
Steve McLaughlin, Founder and CEO of FT Partners, commented on the decision to offer research:
“FT Partners has emerged as the largest global advisory franchise in Fintech and the market’s demand for our entry into the Equity Research business has been building for the last decade. We’ve recruited who we believe to be the most respected Equity Research analysts in the space. While in stealth mode for the last year, the support for our reimagined Equity Research offering from both the buy-side and issuers has been universally enthusiastic.”
The research will be free to qualified institutions, will not include ratings and targets, and is said to offer “unrivaled coverage” of Fintechs.
The free coverage will be augmented by premium offerings that will include a charge.
As many Fintechs receive light coverage and quite a few have been FT Partners clients, the coverage will help boost FT’s value proposition when considering the investment bank in raising capital.
FT Partners’ Equity Research team is led by co-Directors of Research Craig Maurer and Matt O’Neill.
Maurer was most recently a Managing Director at Autonomous Research / Alliance Bernstein, covering 15+ Fintech issuers, and O’Neill was most recently leading Fintech Equity Research coverage at Goldman Sachs, covering 25+ stocks.
Initially Covered Companies as of March 20, 2023:
Adyen (ADYEN-NL)
Affirm (AFRM)
AvidXchange (AVDX)
American Express (AXP)
BILL (BILL)
Coinbase (COIN)
Expensify (EXFY)
Flywire (FLYW)
Global-e (GLBE)
Robinhood (HOOD)
Lemonade (LMND)
Mastercard (MA)
Marqeta (MQ)
Nu (NU)
PagSeguro (PAGS)
Paymentus (PAY)
PayPal (PYPL)
Remitly (RELY)
Shopify (SHOP)
SoFi (SOFI)
Block (SQ)
Toast (TOST)
Upstart (UPST)
Visa (V)
Wise (WISE-GB)