Up, up and away for Travelplanet.pl's IPO

The company sold all the 370,000 shares prepared for the public offer for zł.18 each, which was the top end of the price bracket. Investors were hungry to the tune of one million shares, and purchase orders for investors were slashed by 59.3 percent for those involved in the book building and by 79.65 percent for the remaining investors. "We are really pleased with the tremendous success of our offer. The shares were bought by both institutional and individual investors," said Tomasz Moroz, deputy president of Travelplanet.pl. Part of the collected capital has been earmarked for the opening of new client service centers in malls throughout Poland. By the end of 2006 the firm is planning to open 15 such centers. The remaining capital will be spent on takeovers, expanding the telecom and IT infrastructure and on promoting the brands owned by the company. Travelplanet.pl will be the first e-commerce company quoted on the Warsaw bourse. (Parkiet, p. 4, Puls Biznesu, p. 7) A.F.