Utinet.ru, a major Russian online retailer specializing in notebooks and other electronic goods, has set early July as the target for its planned IPO on the MICEX stock exchange in Moscow, according to Mikhail Ukolov, the group’s Managing partner speaking on an online conference organized last week by Finam, a leading Russian financial company.
This will be the first-ever IPO among Russian online retailers.
As reported earlier by East-West Digital News, the funds raised from the IPO will go to promoting the Utinet.ru brand and to developing advanced technologies for online search for products and services. Utinet.ru plans to improve search parameters based on natural language processing, which allows customers to search for products using informal language — for example, “a white laptop for my mom.”
Utinet.ru turnover at the end of 2010 amounted to 1.06 billion rubles. The company’s EBITDA was 19 million rubles, and its profitability on EBITDA was about 1.8%.
Ukolov said Utinet’s turnover will “increase three-fold in 2011 and at least two-fold in 2012.”
Source: IKS Consulting
