Television: Cyfrowy Polsat to hold zł.1 billion IPO

Poland's leading pay-TV operator Cyfrowy Polsat last week unveiled plans for this year's largest IPO on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The company is expected to offer 75 million existing shares to investors and hopes to raise between zł.800 million and zł.1 billion from the IPO, which is scheduled to take place on May 6.

Cyfrowy Polsat plans to sell a 28-percent stake held by its main shareholder, Polaris Finance, an investment vehicle of Polish tycoon Zygmunt Solorz-Żak. The firm set a share price range of zł.10.80-13.80.

The company had postponed its IPO earlier this year because of unstable market conditions, but Cyfrowy Polsat took the recently improved situation on equity markets as a sign it should go ahead with the listing. "Such a big IPO should be a good barometer for investor appetites for larger offers," Sergiusz Frackowiak, a fund manager at Pekao Pioneer PTE told Reuters. "It's too big not to take a look."

The allocation of shares between institutional and individual investors will be based on the level of demand during book-building, scheduled for April 10-24.

The firm also noted that its 2007 revenues had surged to zł.796.7 million from zł.482.5 million the year before, driven by strong growth in subscription fees. The company plans to spend zł.62.6 million on investments this year, including zł.12.7 million on the launch of a mobile virtual network operator brand.

According to Michał Janik, an analyst at DM PKO BP, the IPO could attract strong interest from investors and could even raise the profile of the Polish stock market among foreign investors. The scale of the IPO means Zygmunt Solorz-Żak, Polsat's owner, will join the ranks of the WSE's billionaire investors.