Property Finder Boss Michael Lahyani on IPO: "We're Not In a Rush"

Property Finder founder and CEO Michael Lahyani has said the company is not in a rush to go public, branding it a "headache".

Property Finder operates in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Egypt, as well as being a majority shareholder in Turkish portal Zingat. The company has achieved a 'unicorn' valuation and is already profitable.

But during the 2025 Endeavor Catalyst Investor Meeting, Lahyani seemed reluctant to pursue a "last resort" flotation:

"Look, an IPO is a headache. Who wants to rush into public markets? Who wants that in their life? I'm not rushing, you need significant skill to IPO.

"Gone are the sub-$5Bn-companies where going to the public market means going to the slaughterhouse. You're going to end up being a lame duck with no liquidity, and you're going to have all the duties of the regulators without the benefits. Scale really matters if you want to go public.

"Post-IPO liquidity is something that really matters. Very few markets apart from the U.S. have this. The UAE is coming there, look at the liquidity where it was three years ago and where it is today, it is more liquid but it's not something that you want to dive straight into. To get liquidity in the UAE you would need to get into the MSCI Index, which currently requires $2.2 billion of free float, so $2.2 billion trading on the stock market, so we would need to be $5 billion-plus. We're not in a rush."

Lahyani did concede that another 2-3 years of strong performance and a growing UAE market could accelerate Property Finder's decision to go public. He further cited advice from former JP Morgan CEO James Gorman, who suggested that going public is a "last resort" source of investment, only to be used when the business has exhausted all private investment channels.

Lahyani revealed Property Finder has benefitted massively from the market bounceback after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, overseeing 6x growth between 2021-2025.

Lahyani also went into detail about artificial intelligence at Property Finder:

"When you lead a business you need to ensure that you are utilising the power of AI as soon as possible to manage your cost.

"One is generating code. We don't hire any more engineers who don't want to use AI tools. Why should we hire you when your colleague who loves using AI and doesn't feel threatened by it, has a 10x production of what you have? Embrace [AI] or become irrelevant."

Lahyani said Property Finder is also mid-transformation for using AI for customer service and sales to free up cash and improve EBITDA and reinvest into innovation and aggressive growth. The company revealed its AI agent avatars have revolutionised content creation for its 'Super Agent' users.

Other topics during the conversation included the birth of Property Finder, surviving the financial crisis, buying out previous investors, and philanthropy.