June 24 (SeeNews) - Turkey's D-MARKET Electronic Services & Trading, the holding company behind e-commerce platform Hepsiburada, will seek to raise gross proceeds of up to $737.6 million (617.8 million euro) in a planned initial public offering (IPO) in the US, it said.
More than 56.7 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) will be placed in the transaction at a targeted price range of between $11 and $13 apiece, the Istanbul-based firm said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published on Wednesday.
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D-MARKET intends to sell roughly 41.7 million ADSs, while an insider will be offering just above 15 million units. The selling shareholder is TurkCommerce BV, which is owned by a foreign entity controlled by US asset manager Franklin Templeton.
Each ADS represents one Class B ordinary share. D-MARKET has also granted underwriters a 30-day option to sell about 8.5 million more units to cover overallotments, if any.
The e-commerce platform owner noted in the filing that it will not receive any proceeds from the sale of ADSs by TurkCommerce. The 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 firm said.
The Turkish firm has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol HEPS. At the top end of the marketed IPO price range, it would command a market capitalisation of $3.7 billion, based on 286 million Class B shares to be outstanding after the offering.
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. Upon completion, the founder will hold 71.1% of the voting power.
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.
(1 euro = 10.3513 lira)