Animoca’s Timeline to Go Public Would Depend on the Market’s Status: Yat Siu

• Animoca Brands’ plans to go public would “depend on the market’s status” in the next few years, its Chairman Yat Siu told CoinDesk.

• Animoca has been looking at Hong Kong or the Middle East for the IPO but Hong Kong is where Animoca is headquartered.

Singapore – Animoca Brands is hoping to go public soon, but the final decision on the timeline is dependent on a key component, the “market’s status, amongst other” aspects, the Web3 giant’s chairman Yat Siu told CoinDesk in Singapore on Monday.

A major investor in the Web3 space, Animoca’s plan to go public became known earlier this year but Siu said we had always wanted to do so.

A report in June said the location would be either Hong Kong or the Middle East.

Siu also appeared to lean toward Hong Kong as a “strong contender” because the company is headquartered in the city, Bloomberg reported.

“It takes time,” Siu told CoinDesk, indicating that settling in on a specific timeline was difficult owing to the number of factors involved.

“We are midway through the audit, which is a critical piece of the IPO (initial public offering) puzzle,” Siu told CoinDesk.

Australia’s DFK Collins is Animoca’s auditor, Siu confirmed, as he stated the need for an audit is one of many confidence-building measures the market and institutions look for when a firm signals a desire to go public.

Animoca was once a public company in Australia but de-listed in 2020 because of regulatory concerns around crypto.

“It’s maybe not a surprise that our growth grew explosively at the time we were delisted because we were able to do many things that, frankly, we couldn’t do because there were things at the time that the ASX was not comfortable with and didn’t understand,” Siu told the Australian Financial Review in 2022.