December 1 (SeeNews) - Shares of Bulgarian telecommunications services provider Allterco [BUL:A4L] started trading on the standard segment of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) on Thursday.
The company has listed 1.5 million shares with a nominal value of 1 lev ($0.54/0.51 euro) each.
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"We are convinced that the capital market is offering a perfect opportunity for attracting investments in technological innovations and we'll see further listings from companies in the IT sector," Vassil Golemanski, CEO of BSE, said during the opening of Thursday's trading session.
In October, Allterco successfully closed an initial public offering (IPO) on the Sofia bourse as 1.5 million shares with a nominal value of 1 lev were subscribed for at a price of 1.45 levs per share.
"We aim at expanding our operations. In case of growth, according to our plan, we will start distributing dividends in the next few years," Allterco CEO Dimitar Dimitrov said. He added that the company's financial results in the first nine months of 2016 had improved drastically.
Dimitrov also said that the company had doubled the number of employees at its R&D centre in Sofia and the centre is continuing to grow.
"At one point we will stop expanding the R&D centre in Sofia and will start to outsource those services to other Bulgarian companies while keeping just the core of our R&D operations," Dimitrov said.
Around 70% of the IPO proceeds will be used for the production, implementation and improvement of the company's projects for home control system SHE and for children's watches MyKi. The rest of the funds will be invested into expansion of the company's telecommunications business, Dimitrov added.
Allterco operates on eight markets worldwide. It generates 43% of its revenues in Bulgaria, 16% in the U.S., 15% in Singapore, 14% in Romania and 10% in Malaysia.
In Southeastern Europe, the Sofia-based company has offices in Romania, Serbia and Macedonia.
Allterco partners with over 20 mobile operators in seven countries on three continents and its services reach around a billion users. The company had a turnover of over 28 million levs last year. It has over 100 employees, most of them based in Bulgaria.
As of 11:00 CET, Allterco's shares were trading 13.8% up at 1.650 levs, bourse data showed. Trading volume was 11,125 shares.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)