Placement at a loss: companies have lost interest in IPOs due to high key
In four months of this year, only one company has gone public, the JetLend crowdlanding platform. For comparison, six organizations have already conducted initial public offerings in the same period last year. The business has lost interest in entering the stock exchange due to the high key rate, because buying new issuers becomes more risky and less profitable compared to storing money on deposit, the market explained to Izvestia. In addition, there is too much volatility on the stock exchange right now. At the same time, the development of the stock market remains a priority for the authorities: the president instructed to double its capitalization by 2030. Whether it will be possible to do this and who can conduct an IPO in the coming years is in the Izvestia article.
IPOs of Russian companies in 2025
In January– April of this year, only one company conducted an initial public offering, JetLend. The crowdlanding platform has entered the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange. During this period, not a single issuer entered the Moscow Stock Exchange. Izvestia sent inquiries to the press services of both sites.
For comparison, in four months a year earlier, six organizations had already gone public — Delimobil (Carsharing Russia), Diasoft software developer, Kristall Alcohol Group (AGC), Europlan leasing company, Zaymer MFO and MTS Bank. Overall, 2024 has become a record year for initial public offerings over the past 17 years, with 14 companies entering the market.
The last high activity of issuers was just at the beginning of 2024, when the stock market was recovering and issuers were often able to place their shares on the stock exchange at high prices, Dmitry Sergeev, chief investment consultant at IC Veles Capital, drew attention.
— The Moscow Stock Exchange index increased from 3,000 to 3,500 points at the beginning of last year, so companies took advantage of this "investment window" to bring their shares to the IPO. Currently, the Moscow Exchange index is at the level of 2800, the market is experiencing high uncertainty about the situation in the global global economy and geopolitical prospects — because of this, it is subject to volatility," the expert explained.
Another significant stop factor is the record high key one, which has been holding at 21% for the past six months. At the beginning of 2024, it was 16%. Buying shares of new issuers is now becoming more risky and less profitable compared to keeping money in bank deposits, explained Natalia Milchakova, a leading analyst at Freedom Finance Global.
In other words, the market conditions this year are not as favorable as they were a year ago. In a growing market, investors, especially private ones, are ready to take any share if the issuer is reliable and these securities contain some interesting medium— or long-term investment idea, Natalia Milchakova explained. She added: In a weak market like this year, people and investment funds prefer to keep money on deposits.
If at the beginning of the year the market and issuers still had positive expectations regarding the dynamics of stocks, then by spring they had deteriorated significantly, as there was a feeling that the negotiation process between Russia and the United States had stalled, added Andrey Petrov, Director of work with wealthy clients at BCS World Investments.
What will happen to the stock market this year
Over the past year, several companies have announced plans to enter the stock exchange. Among them are Rubytech, a manufacturer of software and hardware complexes, Sibur oil and gas company, Rostelecom Data Center service provider, as well as Dom. RF state corporation, analysts recalled.
Izvestia sent inquiries to these organizations about whether they retain plans for the placement of shares and in what time frame this may happen. Only Rubytech responded promptly, stating that the group does not exclude the possibility of entering the stock market.
The development of trading on the stock exchange is a priority for the authorities. Back in February 2024, Vladimir Putin ordered to accelerate the launch of a special IPO regime for high-tech Russian companies in priority industries and double the capitalization of the stock market by 2030 — it should amount to 66% of GDP.
This is important because the stock market is now becoming the only tool for attracting business investment in the face of sanctions and the unavailability of foreign capital, as well as prohibitively high lending rates.
Later, Anton Siluanov called the task of doubling the capitalization of the stock market ambitious. He explained: This cannot be done without state-owned companies entering the stock exchange.
In addition, the minister previously stated that the country needs "big privatization," which implies not only the sale of corporate assets, but also the withdrawal of state corporations to the stock exchange through the placement of shares and their sale to individuals. And the deputy head of the department, Alexei Moiseev, clarified that the Ministry of Finance had submitted to the government a list of seven companies that were proposed to be privatized in 2026.
"In order to double the market capitalization of the stock market to 174-175 trillion rubles by 2030, it is necessary to conduct IPOs and, possibly, SPO (secondary public offerings) of shares totaling from 3.8 trillion to 4.5 trillion annually," Natalia Milchakova from Freedom Finance Global estimated.
For comparison, last year, which was a record for initial public offerings, the total volume of placements amounted to about 85 billion rubles.
So far, according to Alexander Ugryumov, head of the Financial Markets Analysis Department at KIT Finance, market conditions do not allow for any major placements.
A revival of IPOs should be expected when the Bank of Russia moves to reduce the key interest rate — this will reduce the attractiveness of fixed-income instruments such as deposits, said David Grigoriev, senior investment adviser at Gazprombank Investments. At the same time, real estate, which Russians often invest in, is now quite expensive, and mortgage rates are too high. In such circumstances, the stock market will become a real alternative for savings.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
