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Dealz Owner Pepco Valued At €5bn In Warsaw Listing

By Donna Ahern
Dealz Owner Pepco Valued At €5bn In Warsaw Listing

Steinhoff on Friday priced shares in Dealz owner Pepco at 40 zlotys (€8.8) for its Warsaw stock market listing, valuing the discount retailer at around 23 billion zlotys (€5 billion).

The price tag is towards the lower end of a 38 zloty to 46 zloty per share indicative price range, but at 40 zloty the offer was more than five times subscribed, a person with knowledge of the situation said.

The initial public offering (IPO) is Poland's biggest this year and gives a boost to Warsaw's stock market which has had an uptick in listings, but was passed over by parcel delivery company InPost, which opted to list in Amsterdam in January.

The company chose Warsaw over London because Poland is its largest market.

Pepco, which owns the Poundland chain in the United Kingdom as well as the Pepco and Dealz brands in Europe, trades from more than 3,200 stores across 16 countries and is led by chief executive Andy Bond, a former boss of British supermarket group Asda.

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Fallout

South African conglomerate Steinhoff, which is still grappling with the fallout from a 2017 accounting scandal, sold 102.3 million existing shares in Pepco, generating gross proceeds of 4.1 billion zlotys (€900 million).

The IPO cuts Steinhoff's shareholding in Pepco to 78.9%, assuming full exercise of an over-allotment option of a maximum of 12 million shares.

Pepco, which does not trade online, is targeting more than 1 billion euros in core earnings within five to seven years by trebling its number of stores.

Bond sold 847,436 Pepco shares in the IPO, making about 7.5 million euros. He retains more than 3.7 million shares, worth about €33 million at the IPO price.

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Pepco shares are expected to start trading on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on  26 May.

News by Reuters edited by Donna Ahern, Checkout. For more retail stories click here. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.

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