(Reuters) – A post-pandemic economic recovery, a stock market surge to record highs and an uptick in the number of retail investors are fuelling a pick up in listings in Russia following a barren few years.
Russian car dealer Keyauto on Dec. 13 became the latest firm to confirm its intention to float shares, shortly after banking sources told Reuters that fertiliser producer EuroChem could raise more than $1 billion in a 2022 IPO.
Several others are expected to follow in a continued flurry of activity set in motion by the IPO of state shipping company Sovcomflot last October.
But Russia is not immune to market fluctuations. Gold miners GV Gold and Nordgold, car-sharing firm Delimobil and convenience store chain Mercury Retail Group all postponed IPOs this year.
Below is an overview of major market debuts by Russian companies:
2021
* Four companies listed in the autumn of 2021. In November, SPB Exchange, Russia’s second-largest bourse raised around $175 million in an IPO on its own platform. Real estate database Cian raised more than $290 million in a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
* IT company Softline raised $400 million in a London listing in October, shortly after Renaissance Insurance raised $250 million in Moscow.
* 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, Andrey Ostroukh and Olga Popova; Editing by David Evans)
