Expert, April 15, 2002

RosBusinessConsulting (RBC) will be the first Internet company to conduct an IPO in Russia. 16% of RBC will be placed on two major Russian stock exchanges - the MICEX and the RTS on April 18. According to analysts of the underwriter of RBC's IPO - the Àton investment company - this may bring the company around $16m. Later, RBC will also convert its promissory notes into shares and expand offering, as a result of which around 25% of the company will be placed on the stock market.

According to Àton analysts, as a result of entering the stock market, RBC's capitalization will reach around $70-121m. This is a "conservative" estimation of RBC's business, carried out by Àton in accordance with the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) method. This is quite a lot for a company, who's total revenues haven't even reached $17m, and especially if we take into consideration the fact that Àton's analyst Steven Dashevsky declared in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper last November that RBC's net worth "barely exceeds $30-40m." Other specialists were estimating the company's net worth even less than that. Most likely, a detailed financial report of the issuer made it possible for the underwriter to elaborate on such an adjusted version of the forecast.

Nevertheless, we should admit the fact that the demand for shares in this segment of the Russian market hasn't been examined yet. This is the first time that the Russian company, which is on the one hand the leader in several sectors of the Internet and web-system integration, and on the other hand 46% of its revenues come from such an unreliable source as web advertising, makes an IPO. Anyway, the majority of traders think that shares of RBC Information Systems will have a warm welcome for the simple reason that there haven't been any IPOs on the Russian market for a long time and investment companies need to diversify their portfolios and buy something different from shares of the fuel and energy sector and energy grids, especially on the growing market.