(Bloomberg) — Turkish commercial real estate developer Ronesans Gayrimenkul will sell shares in an initial public offering, the biggest in Istanbul so far this year.
Ronesans Gayrimenkul Yatirim AS, as the company is known, will issue about 27.3 million new shares while shareholder Euro Cube Private Limited, a unit of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, will sell a further 6.07 million shares at a price of 135 liras each, according to a regulatory approval published late Thursday. At that price, the IPO is set to raise about 4.5 billion liras ($141 million).
Ronesans Gayrimenkul is Turkey’s largest shopping center investor, according to its website. Its portfolio includes 12 shopping centers and four office buildings, concentrated in the nation’s biggest cities. The company is majority-owned by Ronesans Emlak Gelistirme Holding AS, while Euro Cube owns 21.4%.
Turkey’s IPO boom made it one of the largest listing venues in Europe, the Middle East and Africa last year. A total of 56 companies went public in Turkey in 2023, raising 79.8 billion liras overall and making the average size of an IPO 1.4 billion liras for the year. If Ronesans Gayrimenkul’s flotation goes as planned, it will increase the average IPO size to nearly 2 billion liras for 10 public offerings this year, vindicating market strategists’ forecasts of fewer but bigger listings this year.
The Turkish IPO market has been popular among local retail investors since 2020 as rampant inflation lured them into equities, and steep gains in newly-listed stocks in their early trading days have made them even more attractive. That appetite has also drawn mostly medium-sized firms to tap the equity market as a source of fresh financing.
Turkey’s market regulator said in November that there were nearly 100 companies waiting for approval to list in 2024, but that it expected about 50 IPOs annually in order to manage the pace in a way that ensures the market can absorb the new shares.
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