By Olga Popova and Alexander Marrow
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian men’s clothing chain Henderson said on Thursday it had raised 3.8 billion roubles ($40.8 million) through its initial public offering, giving the retailer a market value of around 27.3 billion roubles which exceeded early estimates.
Henderson operates 159 stores across 64 cities in Russia as well as in Armenia and has benefited from the exodus of hundreds of foreign retailers from Russia since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Henderson said the IPO was oversubscribed several times over, with strong demand from retail and institutional investors pushing the share price to the upper end of the indicative price range of 675 roubles each.
The company said it had raised 3 billion roubles through the issue of 4.4 million shares. A stabilisation package and founder Ruben Arutyunyan sale of 300 million roubles’ worth of stock took the overall size of the offering to 3.8 billion roubles.
Henderson will trade under the HNFG ticker and free float will be 13.9%, the company said. It intends to use the funds raised to finance growth, including opening new stores and revamping others.
The gradual departure of foreign retailers since Russia began what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine left some of Moscow’s most prestigious streets with boarded up stores and the industry reeling from a roughly $2.5 billion hit.
Russia has seen few share listings since the start of the Ukraine conflict. Offers have been generally small and dependent on Russian investors after an exodus of Western capital.
Tech firm Astra last month raised around $36 million in a Moscow IPO and Gold miner Uzhuralzoloto is also planning a listing.
($1 = 93.2025 roubles)
(Reporting by Olga Popova in Moscow and Alexander Marrow in London; additional reporting by Felix Light; editing by Jason Neely and Miral Fahmy)
