CIAN applied for an IPO in the US and Russia. What can investors expect

The owner of a real estate ad service is preparing to conduct an IPO. Experts estimate the value of the company at $1 billion,

On Wednesday, October 13, Cypriot Cian PLC filed registration documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to place depository receipts on the New York Stock Exchange. This company owns Airieltor LLC, the main legal entity of the CIAN real estate database, as well as N1.ru LLC, MLSN.ru LLC and EMLS.ru LLC, a legal entity of the N1 Group, which the group acquired earlier this year . it is assumed that the company's papers will also be traded on the Moscow Exchange. Terms of placement have not yet been named. The materials only note that the funds raised during the IPO are planned to be used to pay off the group's obligations and support its growth.

Now 65.34% of Cian PLC is owned by Ronder Investment Limited, Speedtime Trading Limited and Onlypiece Trading Limited, affiliated with Elbrus Capital, 14.11% by Goldman Sachs Group structures, 11.52% by Cian founder Dmitry Demin MPOC Technologies Ltd, 6 .64% - to the group's CEO Maxim Melnikov, 1.37% - to the company of another founder of the group, Sergei Osipov, Joox Limited, 1.01% - to OTAGA Limited, the ultimate owner of which is businessman Ivan Tavrin.

Underwriters of the placement are Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities, JPMorgan, Renaissance Capital, VTB Capital, Raiffeisenbank and Tinkoff.

The fact that Cian is considering the possibility of entering the American stock exchange was announced at the beginning of this year by Dmitry Kryukov, partner at Elbrus Capital, in an interview with BLOOMBERG. According to him, the company's valuation in the near future could reach $1 billion. Reuters' interlocutors in the financial market said that the IPO volume could be about $300 million. At the same time, a RBC source familiar with the company's plans said that the placement could take place before the end of this year .

A few months ago, Cian's IPO plans were called into question - Avito showed interest in buying the company. However, the deal was not approved by the Federal Antimonopoly Service. One of RBC's interlocutors in the IT market said that Yandex also showed interest in Cian, but a representative of the latter stated that they did not comment on rumors.

What is the state of CIAN now

As follows from the company's materials, the Cian real estate ad service is a leader in RUSSIA, primarily in Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg , the Leningrad region, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. The company believes that the Russian real estate classifieds market is growing and far from being saturated. According to the estimates of the analytical company Frost & Sullivan, cited in the materials, in 2020 the volume of this market in Russia amounted to approximately $238 billion, and in 2021-2025 it will grow by an average of 27% per year. At the same time, the digitalization process has only just begun. The potential size of the market for itself in Cian is estimated at $6 billion.