Marel is locked up for 180 days. Certain
members of the management team and its
largest shareholder Eyrir Invest are also
locked up for 180 days.
One banker said the strong aftermarket
performance is in part due to strong
demand leading to tight allocations, as well
as the stock moving to close the price gap
between the new Dutch listing and the
existing Icelandic listing.
Citigroup and JP Morgan were global
coordinators with ABN AMRO, ING and
Rabobank as bookrunners. Arion Bank and
Landsbankinn were lead managers and
Icelandic retail managers. STJ Advisors
advised.
ISRAEL
FIVERR IPO COMPLICATED BY RIVAL’S
SHARE SLIDE
Tel Aviv-based online marketplace FIVERR
INTERNATIONAL is pushing ahead with its
US$106m NYSE IPO despite recent heavy
pressure on the share price of its most
obvious comp, UPWORK.
Fiverr would be this year’s second Israeli
tech company to list in the US after the
SUCCESSFULûDEBUTûINû!PRILûOFû4UlNû3OFTWAREû
Technologies, up 60% on pricing. Fiverr
plans to sell 5.3m new shares at US$18-$20
each for proceeds of up to US$105.2m.
The IPO, led by JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of
America Merrill Lynch and UBS, is expected to
price after the close on Wednesday, June 12.
Fiverr grew revenues 42% to US$23.8m in
THEûlRSTûQUARTERûOFûûBUTûREPORTEDûAûNETû
loss of US$8.3m and is expected to remain
loss-making for the foreseeable future.
“Fiverr is a few years from Ebitda break-
even but the focus is going to be on the
company’s 30%-plus top-line growth,” a
banker close to the deal said.
With 2.1m active buyers (businesses that buy
services on its platform) and 255,000 active
sellers or freelancers in 160 countries, Fiverr’s
platform is tapping a market opportunity for
freelance work or “gigs” it estimates to be
worth US$100bn a year in the US alone.
The platform offers a search process that
mirrors a typical e-commerce transaction
and enables businesses to purchase
standardised services such as logo design,
video creation and editing, website
development and blog writing at prices
from US$5 to thousands of dollars.
Bankers concede that Fiverr will likely price
its IPO at a lower multiple of forward sales
than where Upwork is currently trading.
Upwork went public at US$15.00 a share in
October last year after raising base proceeds of
US$187.2m. Its stock price hit a record high ofUS$25.00 in late February but has slumped in
recent months back below the IPO price.
.OTABLY û&IVERRûlRSTûlLEDûCONlDENTIALLYûTOû
go public in early February when Upwork
shares were also trading comfortably above
the IPO price.
Reporting quarterly results last month,
Upwork slightly disappointed analysts with its
take rate (revenue divided by gross services
volume) and second-quarter guidance.
On Thomson Reuters numbers Upwork is
trading on a multiple of 5.1 times EV-to-sales for
2019 and 4.2 times next year’s projected sales,
THOUGHûTHEûLATTERûISûMUCHûDEmATEDûFROMûSIXû
times-plus before it reported last month.
“Fiverr’s price will be half a turn to a full
turn down from Upwork on 2020 numbers,”
the banker said.
Upwork is much bigger than Fiverr
(US$253.4m of sales last year versus Fiverr’s
US$75.5m), but Fiver is growing faster (40%-
plus versus Upwork’s circa 20%) from a
lower base.NORWAY
BKK HALVES STAKE IN FJORDKRAFT IN ABBPower company BKK sold 15% of electricity
supplier FJORDKRAFT last Monday evening in
an ABB run by ABG Sundal Collier.Kinnevik seeks to cash in on LatAm wireless
LUXEMBOURG Swedish investor to sell down in MillicomKinnevik AB, the Swedish investment
conglomerate, unveiled plans last week to shed
its entire stake in EM-focused wireless telecom
provider MILLICOM INTERNATIONAL CELLULAR as
part of a broader initiative to redeploy capital
toward earlier-stage, high-growth investments.
The first step in that disposal will see it sell
11m shares in a marketed follow-on stock sale
and distribute any remaining shares to its
shareholders in December.
Kinnevik would reduce its stake to 26.4%
in the base deal, from 37.2% currently, and to
24.8% should the banks exercise the greenshoe,
leaving it with 25.2m shares.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is sole global
coordinator on the stock sale, with Morgan
Stanley enlisted as joint bookrunner and Nordea
as lead manager.
To get the message out, Millicom International
management is conducting an extensive, five-day
roadshow with the public stock sale not to price
until Wednesday, June 12. Management is stepping
in by investing US$5m on the public stock sale.
Millicom’s Nasdaq-listed shares fell 2.7% on
the week to US$54.93 as of midday on Friday.At the current share price, Millicom trades at
just 3.9-times EV-to-2019 Ebitda – the sell-down
is reminiscent of AT&T’s decision last year not to
proceed with the planned spin-off of its LatAm
and Caribbean pay TV unit Vrio after investors
dialled down the valuation to four times, IFR
reported at the time.
In the first quarter, Millicom generated
adjusted Ebitda of US$377m on revenue of
US$1.07bn.
“It does look very cheap,” a banker involved
told IFR. “There has been good interest early on.”
Another reason to market is that Millicom
trades just 12,281 shares daily.
“This is a business with strong distributable
cash flow generation,” said the banker.
“Management want to continue to make
acquisitions where they see fit. They have been
telling investors that they want to keep target
leverage at about two times.”
Millicom CEO Mauricio Ramos and Tim
Pennington, the company’s CFO, initially
canvassed accounts in New York and Boston,
before splitting into two teams that will canvass
accounts in the US and Europe.Millicom provides mobile telecom to
48.3m customers and fixed-line telecom
services to 4.1m customers across six
Latin American countries and two African
countries, though it recently agreed to sell its
business in Chad.
Millicom also spent US$1.65bn in February
to acquire cellular businesses in Panama, Costa
Rica and Nicaragua that are expected to close in
H2 2019. The company inked a US$300m five-
year term loan to help fund the purchase (see
Loans).
In addition, Africa e-commerce play Jumia
Technologies, in which Millicom owns a 6.7%
stake, went public in April.
Earlier this year, Millicom terminated talks to
be acquired by Liberty Latin America.
As for Kinnevik, which owns stakes in German
online fashion retailer Zalando, German internet
incubator Rocket Internet, and Swedish telecom
Tele2, among others, it is looking to redeploy
the capital harvested from Millicom for new
investments focused on the Nordics, the US, and
other selected markets.
Stephen Lacey