Fruity finance
Helio, the leading producer of poppy-seed filling and an importer-distributor of nuts and dried fruit, plans to debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange this year.
The company will offer approximately 1.1 million shares, with around 900,000 reserved for institutional investors and 228,000 for individual investors. The issue price has been set at between zł.9-10.5 and the IPO is expected to take place at the beginning of Q2.
Helio is planning to assign money from its debut to the construction of a new plant and to infrastructure modernization. Moreover, it intends to launch its products onto EU and Eastern European markets. "From our IPO, we want to win the means to strengthen Helio's position on the Polish market by extending our production capabilities and, in the long term, to enter Europe," said Leszek Wšsowicz, the president of Helio's board.
Helio, formerly known as Bona, was set up in 1992. It offers its products under the Helio, Bona and Słoneczne Owoce brands and generic labels such as Auchan, E.Leclerc and Lidl. Currently it has about a five-percent share of the dried-fruit-and-nut market, whereas in poppy seed filling it claims around 60 percent of the market. According to the firm's estimates, its 2006 revenue was zł.38.5 million, a 40-percent increase on its 2005 results.
The Polish dried-fruit-and-nuts market is worth about zł.500 million annually and, according to expert projections, it is expected to increase by around five to six percent a year. "Our estimations show that the market [for dried fruit and nuts] in Poland will be increasing systematically within the next few years," said Tomasz Binkiewicz from BO brokerage house, which is preparing the IPO.
