December 5 (SeeNews) - The initial public offering (IPO) of Bulgarian printing and advertising company Billboard will be oversubscribed in the top half of the indicated price range of 5.5 to 7.5 levs ($4.1-$5.6/2.8 euro - 3.8 euro) per share, investment intermediary Elana Trading said on Wednesday.
Billboard is offering investors 1.5 million shares in the IPO which was launched on Wednesday and will close on Friday.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
A dozen Bulgarian companies have performed public offerings since the beginning of this year, most of them heavily oversubscribed. The IPO of road construction company Trace attracted the strongest interest, as investors offered some 1,480 times more money than the company sought.
The latest IPO on local capital market - by holding company Agria Group Holding - was 1.5 times oversubscribed.
“The weak interest in the IPO of Agria Group raises doubts about the future interest in Billboard,” Elana said. "However, the company is smaller, with attractive indicators and an established IPO manager, so we expect oversubscription and a price in the top half of the indicative range."
First Financial Brokerage House has been hired to act as manager of Billboard's IPO.
With the IPO proceeds Billboard plans to fund its investments.
The company plans to raise its sales by 60% to 27.1 million levs this year. Sales are seen rising further by between 20 to 32% until 2010. Net profit is expected at 2.2 million levs in 2007, up 27%. Net profit is seen rising to 3.7 million levs in 2008, 5.7 million levs in 2009 and 6.8 million levs in 2010.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)