Cian, a leading online real estate classifieds platform in Russia, began trading on the New York exchange on Friday, Nov. 5, with a secondary listing on the Moscow exchange announced as imminent.
At a company valuation of $1.1 billion, Cian shares had been oversubscribed 10 times by investors, a source in the financial market told Reuters. In their debut on the Nasdaq, the shares opened 8.7% above the IPO price ($16.00 per ADS, the upper limit of the indicative range). They quickly reaching $17.6, but fell to $16.5 on Nov. 8.
Of the IPO proceeds, nearly $293 million, $228 million went to selling shareholders. The remaining $65 million will be used by the company “for mergers and acquisitions or to repay a loan,” its chief executive Maxim Melnikov told Reuters.
Cian had a loan balance of 542 million roubles ($7.62 million) as of June 30, according to company data cited by Reuters. The company currently holds 810 million roubles (nearly $11.4 million at today’s exchange rate) in cash and cash equivalents.
From inception to IPO in 20 years
Cian, founded in 2001, is the most established online real estate classifieds platform in Russia. With a strong presence in the country’s key metropolitan areas, it “connects millions of real estate buyers and renters to millions of high-quality real estate listings of all types — residential and commercial, primary and secondary, urban and suburban.”
In the first half of 2021, more than 2.1 million listings were available through the platform featured more than 2.1 million listings available through its platform and an average UMV of over 20 million.
Citing SimilarWeb and Google Analytics data, the platform says it ranks among the top ten most popular online real estate classifieds globally in terms of traffic. It attracted more than 20 million unique visitors per month on average in the first half of this year.
The most recent international IPOs of Russian or Russia-connected tech companies involved
- IT major Softline (London and Moscow listings in October 2021);
- Game development giant Nexters (Nasdaq through a SPAC merger in August 2021);
- E-commerce major Ozon (Nasdaq IPO in December 2020).
In October 2021, Russian car sharing major Delimobil filed for listing on the Nasdaq. However Friday last week the company decided to postpone the IPO, “despite receiving high quality interest from investors.” The company cited, not very convincingly, unfavorable “market conditions.”
Read more on this topic in The Moscow Times: “Is the Tide Turning for Russia’s IPO Wave?“
