June 1 (SeeNews) - Turkish D-MARKET Electronic Services & Trading, the holding company behind e-commerce platform Hepsiburada, said it has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US, seeking to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The Istanbul-based firm, as well as certain insiders, will be offering American Depositary Shares (ADSs) in the transaction, it said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published on May 28.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
The number of units to be sold and the targeted price range have not been set yet. At this stage of the IPO process, D-MARKET has listed the size of the offering (IPO) as $100 million (81.7 million euro) which is a placeholder amount likely to change later.
D-MARKET is controlled by Turkey’s Dogan family, the owners of one of the country's largest conglomerates, Dogan Holdings. The e-commerce platform was founded by Hanzade Vasfiye Dogan Boyner, who is listed in the prospectus as a holder of 74.6% of the total voting power of the company.
Established in 2000, Hepsiburada holds about 2% share of the highly fragmented Turkish retail market which remains dominated by offline retail players, according to research and analysis firm ADL. In 2020, it connected 33 million members, nine million active customers and a base of around 45,000 merchants.
The business generated revenue of more than 6.37 billion lira in 2020, up from 2.6 billion lira in 2019. It reported operating loss of 181 million lira last year, compared with 101.1 million lira profit a year earlier.
JP Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley & Co and Goldman, Sachs & Co have been tapped as lead bookrunners for the IPO. The list of underwriters also includes BofA Securities and UBS Securities.
The e-commerce company intends to use the net proceeds from the floatation for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures. A portion may also go for acquisitions of, or strategic investments in, complementary businesses, products, services, or technologies, the securities filing said.
(1 euro = 0.0959 lira)
YOU CAN SUBSCRIBE TO OUR M&A NEWSLETTER HERE.