Philippine tech firm Xurpas raises over $25m in fresh funds

Philippine tech company Xurpas, which develops mobile products and services, has topped up its war chest with a new US$25.6 million funding, it revealed today.

In a statement, the publicly listed firm said the amount it raised would support its expansion and fund its capital expenditure program.

“This fresh capital will give us the opportunity to strengthen our efforts to rapidly expand not only to other markets, but in the new business verticals that will drive our continued growth,” noted co-founder and CEO Nix Nolledo. We’ve reached out to Nix about their plans, but he declined to divulge the details.

Cashing in

Nix and two other Xurpas co-founders, Raymond Gerard Racaza and Fernando Jude Garcia, sold some of their shares worth US$53.4 million to local and international institutional investors, and injected a portion of the proceeds back into Xurpas by buying new shares.

The transaction effectively diluted the stakes of the trio in the company and widened the company’s public float. That will allow more investors to own shares in Xurpas, they said.

Founded in 2001, Xurpas is a well known success story among homegrown tech companies in the Philippines, having never raised venture capital. Instead, the firm, which has grown to become one of the largest in its category, went straight for an initial public offering (IPO).

See: Straight to IPO: How Philippine tech company Xurpas grew without venture capital

Xurpas creates digital products and services like casual games, messaging, and other social discovery platforms for mobile users. It also develops proprietary platforms for telcos, including SMS and data bundles, peer-to-peer airtime credit transfers, and various forms of mobile commerce.

Since its IPO in 2014, Xurpas has been on an acquisition binge, snapping up stakes in several companies in Southeast Asia and the US, such as Singapore-based game development studio Altitude Games and multiplayer games platform MatchMe, Indonesian mobile content provider 9lives, and California-based mobile search engine Quick.ly.

Converted from Philippine peso. Rate: US$1 = PHP 46.82.