IPO included in plans – Kommersant FM

Telegram is thinking about an IPO; it could take place in the next two years, Kommersant FM’s interlocutors are sure. Messenger has already received a preliminary valuation of “$30 billion or more,” said the founder and owner of the site, Pavel Durov, in an interview with the Financial Times. According to him, potential investors, including global technology funds, valued the company at this amount. However, the businessman did not specify where and when the initial public offering could take place. So is a Telegram IPO necessary? And how can it affect the policy of the messenger? Ivan Khorushevsky sorted it out.

For the first time, talk about an IPO of Telegram began in 2021, when the company was experiencing difficulties with financing and expected to put up to a quarter of its shares into free circulation, Vedomosti reported. But the plans were never implemented. Since then, the messenger’s monthly audience has grown from 500 million to almost 1 billion active users.

Thanks to the launch of advertising, the site, according to Pavel Durov, began to earn “hundreds of millions of dollars.” But the idea of ​​entering the stock exchange has not become any less relevant, noted Sergei Novikov, partner of the GRM legal group: “The content of Telegram is still not a cheap thing. According to my estimates, this is about $600-650 million per year with an announced audience of 900 million users.

We must also understand that the bond placement period ends in the spring of 2026, and Pavel Durov must compensate their holders about $2 billion. An IPO is a very good and effective way to solve these problems.”

With an IPO, Telegram can actually pay off holders of bonds issued back in 2021. After entering the stock exchange, the company simply converts debt securities into shares with a discount of 15 to 20%, the media wrote about this in the fall of 2023. Pavel Durov did not comment on these rumors. This time, the owner of the messenger was also taciturn, mentioning only that the site was valued at $30 billion. The businessman was allegedly offered to cede the asset for this amount, but he refused.

However, the site is less ready for an IPO than for a sale, Managing Director of the investment company Ivolga Capital Dmitry Alexandrov is convinced: “Very little is still known about the financial condition of the company and how capable it is of generating profitability. Therefore, if we talk about an acquisition by an individual industry investor, then Telegram could be a very interesting asset from the point of view of integration into the overall ecosystem of a potential shareholder.

But within the framework of an IPO, in order to count on such a level of capitalization, the messenger, of course, must make more efforts in communicating with its future shareholders.”

It is not yet clear where Telegram can hold an IPO. The company is based in the United Arab Emirates, but three years ago it considered listing not on local sites, but on the Hong Kong exchange. However, in Asia the messenger is unlikely to be able to count on a high rating and a warm welcome from investors, Kommersant FM’s interlocutors are sure. It is much more promising for the platform to target the American market. Although this idea is also difficult to implement, noted Leonid Delitsyn, an analyst at the Finam group of companies:

“Most likely, this will be very difficult for various administrative reasons, in particular related to the positioning of this messenger as safe and not cooperating with the authorities. This would probably be comparable to the IPO of some crypto exchange Binance, if this could happen. But there may be an option in which Durov sells Telegram to trustworthy and well-intentioned American owners. They will make the company completely Western and familiar to investors, and only then it will go public, based on, say, a forecast for 2026.”

Kommersant FM’s interlocutors do not rule out that in this case the messenger may revise both its privacy policy and its approach to content filtering. But, most importantly, it is unknown how Telegram’s attitude towards the Russian market will change.

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