Fintel Energija a.d. began realizing its first initial public offering (IPO) several days ago, the first such financial operation at the Belgrade Stock Exchange after 78 years. The company will offer 6.5 million ordinary shares, and the plan is to collect EUR 27 million this way, to be invested in the company’s own projects in Serbia.
As the company’s CEO, Tiziano Giovannetti, emphasized,
the shares can be purchased by professional investors, families and private investors, and the intention is for as many people as possible to get involved.
Can this move of the company which has so far invested EUR 150 million in wind farms in Serbia stimulate others to do the same, that is, to finance their growth with the capital collected at the stock exchange?
Let us remind that the Belgrade Stock Exchange and the consulting company PwC have initiated the project Serbia: IPO Go!, aiming to promote and help realize IPOs in the private sector. Among other things, the aim is for at least two to three companies to come out with IPOs early next year or start preparing to do so. Whether the plan will be fulfilled, however, was not specified at the Belgrade Stock Exchange for our portal. They only pointed out that they “believe that, with the realization of the first IPO by Fintel Energija, local companies will further educate themselves about the opportunities available to them when it comes to financing and that we can therefore hope that there will be new IPOs”.
The potential for entering the stock exchange is nevertheless big in the Serbian economy, they believe. As they explain, whether it’s big private companies, whose organic growth entails the enhancement of the corporate structure, or even big state systems, the necessity of whose corporatization and efficiency improvement they emphasize, schools of economics hold the entrance to the stock exchange to be the most efficient way to reach these goals within an economy.
– It is also known that citizens of Serbia invest considerable funds each month in trading with different financial instruments in foreign stock exchanges. With the entrance of local companies to the Belgrade Stock Exchange, these funds would remain in Serbia, which would benefit not just the investors, but also companies, employees and the society as a whole.
Why IPO is a good way for companies to continue investing in their developmentCompanies looking to expand their business are always presented with a choice of how to finance their growth – from their own funds, through loans, or through the collection of funds in the capital market, and the majority of today’s large global corporations at some point opted for the latter option, the Belgrade Stock Exchange says. They note that this is the most efficient way for a company to collect additional funds for securing its expansive growth.