Plus500 hopes to raise $50 million, at a company valuation of about $225 million.
UK/Cyprus based CFD broker Plus500 is not wasting much time on its planned IPO. The company will be hitting the road to meet with potential investors this week and next, before planning to price its IPO on or around Tuesday, July 23 and begin trading on the London AIM Market on Wednesday, July 24, according to information on the London Stock Exchange website.
When a company plans to ‘go public’, and list its shares on a stock exchange, it typically goes on such a one or two week roadshow, presenting the company in detail in one-on-one meetings with (mainly) institutional investors such as mutual fund managers and hedge funds. The issuer (Plus500 in this case) hopes that these investors will both subscribe to buy some of the company’s shares in the offering, as well as be active in trading the company’s shares after the offering.
Plus500’s offering will be what is called a combined primary and secondary offering — with about half of the proceeds of the offering going to the company, and half going to some of the company’s existing shareholders, who will be selling some of their shares in the IPO.
Who are Plus500’s shareholders? The largest Plus500 shareholder is Managing Director Alon Gonen, who holds about 40%. Gonen, along with Plus500 CEO Gal Haber (14% shareholder) had worked together previously. According to Israeli business newspaper Globes, Gonen and Haber had co-founded Interlogic Ltd., which operates online backgammon site Play65. Two other Plus500 co-founders, Shimon Sofer and Elad Ben Izhak, also hold 14% each. Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann each own about 8.5%.
Over the coming days we will be providing more analysis and insight, comparing the size and valuation of the Plus500 IPO to the recently closed IPO of KVB Kunlun in Hong Kong, as well as to the valuations of publicly traded online forex brokers such as FXCM, Gain Capital (Forex.com), and IG Group.
And we’ll be bringing you more news from the Plus500 roadshow, as it becomes available.
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