Shares in Poland’s largest convenience store chain, Żabka, rose by 7% after the company debuted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on Thursday.
Originally offered at 21.50 złotys (€4.98), the share price opened at 23 złotys (€5.30) before falling to 22 złotys, bringing investors a return of under 2%, although they had expected more.
Żabka share purchasers polled before the launch by Bankier.pl analysts had on average expected returns of 10% on the share offering.
Following the debut, the company’s market capitalization rose to 5.33 billion euros.
The Warsaw Stock Exchange chairman, Tomasz Bardziłowski, said: “The Żabka Group IPO is the biggest debut on the Warsaw exchange in many years, and is also the largest IPO in Europe in the second half of this year.
“This is a moment we have waited a long time for. It is the opening of a new chapter in the history of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.”
The last Warsaw IPO of that scale was online marketplace Allegro, which debuted in November 2020 with a valuation of €9.8 billion. It is now worth €8.5 billion.
Żabka currently has 9,000 franchise owners running 11,000 franchised outlets throughout Poland and is expanding into Romania.
The current valuation suggests only online marketplace Allegro and supermarket chain Dino are larger in the retail sector of Warsaw-listed companies.
However, it is not clear yet whether the company will make it into the WIG20 index of the largest companies on the stock exchange.
Extracted in full from: https://tvpworld.com/83016173/zabka-convenience-store-group-leaps-onto-the-warsaw-stock-market
