PRESS: Online cinema ivi may float on Nasdaq by 2021

MOSCOW, Jan 30 (PRIME) -- Russia’s leading online cinema ivi could hold an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq until the end of 2020, which may value the company at over U.S. $700 million, business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

ivi declined to comment.

One of the sources said a successful IPO of recruiting service HeadHunter on the Nasdaq in May 2019 pushed ivi to an active preparation for floatation.

Kommersant quoted a source as saying that ivi has already hired investment bank JPMorgan Chase to organize the floatation.

Leonid Boguslavsky, whose ru-Net Holdings, now RTP Global, was one of the first ivi’s investors, said the IPO decision “has not been made yet.”

The online cinema’s General Director and founder Oleg Tumanov earlier repeatedly spoke about the company’s plans to go public.

According to preliminary data of researcher TMT Consulting, the country’s market of online cinemas exceeded 17 billion rubles in 2019 with ivi’s share standing at 36% in 2018.

Venture investor and the founder of A.Partners Alexei Solovyov said that an IPO requires a market share from 40% tî 60%.

“A company, which specializes on one regional segment, should have a semimonopoly position,” he said. “ivi is tentatively close to the lower bracket.”

Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn valued ivi at $720 mln using the Netflix multiplicator and a forecast 2019 revenue. He believes that the underwriters will value it at $700–800 mln.

(62.3934 rubles – U.S. $1)

End