MOSCOW (Reuters) – A post-pandemic economic recovery and a stock market surge to record highs are fuelling a pick up in listings in Russia following a barren few years.
Russian IT company Softline on Oct. 7 became the latest firm to confirm its intention to float on the London Stock Exchange in October 2021.
Several others are now expected to follow in a flurry of activity set in motion by the initial public offering (IPO) of state shipping company Sovcomflot last October.
Real estate database CIAN, car sharing company Delimobil, food retailer Vkusvill and the SPB Exchange are all preparing IPOs in Russia and abroad among others, sources have said.
Mercury Retail Group is aiming to raise over $1 billion in a Moscow IPO by year-end, three financial market sources told Reuters.
But Russia is not immune to market fluctuations. Gold miners GV Gold and Nordgold postponed IPOs this year, citing uncertainty and volatility in the sector.
Below is an overview of major market debuts by Russian companies:
2021
* Renaissance Insurance announced its intention to float on Sept. 27.
* In the first half of 2021, three companies staged market debuts. Cut-price retailer Fix Price’s dual listing in London and Moscow raised almost $2 billion in March, making it the biggest Russian IPO since Western sanctions were introduced in 2014.
* Forestry group Segezha (Moscow Exchange; equivalent of $402 million), and healthcare provider EMC (Moscow Exchange; $500 million) followed suit in April and July.
* Kismet Acquisition One Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), completed a deal with video game developer Nexters to start trading Nexters Inc. shares on the Nasdaq in August. It was the first deal involving a company from Russia and a Russian SPAC to list shares in the United States.
2019-2020
* The two major listings in 2020 were online retailer Ozon (Nasdaq; $990 million) in November and Sovcomflot (Moscow Exchange; $550 million) in October. Sovcomflot’s IPO marked the first major stock exchange flotation in Moscow in three years.
* Other IPOs in 2019-2020 were Samolet (Moscow Exchange; $38.2 million), Headhunter (Nasdaq; $220 million), Kismet Acquisition One Corp (Nasdaq; $250 million), Don Agro (Singapore; $3.6 million) and Gemabank (Moscow Exchange; $2.4 million).
* Headhunter’s 2019 debut was the first IPO of a Russian company in the United States since Washington began imposing sanctions on Moscow in 2014.
2018 AND EARLIER
* In 2018, there were no Russian IPOs for the first time in a decade.
* Sixteen Russian companies carried out IPOs from 2015-2017, compared with 43 deals between 2008 and 2014.
* The biggest Russian IPO to date was a $10.7 billion flotation by oil major Rosneft in London and Moscow in 2006, followed by an $8 billion offering from state-run VTB Bank in 2007.
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Additional reporting by Olga Popova; Editing by Andrey Ostroukh and David Gregorio)
