October 1 (SeeNews) - Romanian online retailer elefant.ro said it has raised 7.65 million lei ($1.9 million/ 1.6 million euro) through a private placement of bonds run by Tradeville.
The offer had an initial value of 5.8 million lei which was increased due to high investor interest, Tradeville and elefant.ro said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The three-year bonds bear a coupon rate of 9% per year, according to information from Tradeville.
Subscriptions to the bonds could be made exclusively through Tradeville and the offer was available to a limited number of investors. Due to the high demand, the offer was closed four days earlier than planned.
The issuer plans to take steps to list the bonds on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).
"The confidence of investors in elefant.ro demonstrates the viability of the ambitious plan which we set out eight years ago: the creation and development of an online mall dedicated to the family. Its development from now on will convince more and more investors that in this area and especially in elefant.ro, there is a huge potential for growth," elefant.ro CEO Sergiu Chirca said.
The growth of elefant.ro's business accelerated in recent years. The volume of orders increased 3.5 times between 2014 and 2017, and turnover rose 2.6 times over the same period,, the company said.
In May, the online retailer transformed its pick-up point in Moldova's capital Chisinau into a showroom. elefant.ro expanded to Moldova in 2016, after opening a pick-up point there and a dedicated website for orders.
Elefant.ro was founded in 2010 through investment of about 1.2 million euro by Greenlight Invest (now Fribourg Capital), one of the investment funds controlled by Ion Sturza, former deputy general manager of Romania's Rompetrol and former prime minister of Moldova.
(1 euro=4.6637 lei)