Page 153 - SE Outlook Regions 2023

Newly-established Bulgarian company AE Solar Horizon will aim to
raise €100mn by the end of 2023 and is already in talks with a number
of European stock exchanges about a potential future initial public
offering (IPO).

Bulgaria's Fibank decided to extend beyond December 2022 the
duration of its one-year bond issuance programme worth up to €100mn.
The bank has said that the issuance of perpetual, non-cumulative,
uncollateralised, deeply subordinated and non-convertible bonds meet
specific requirements for additional Tier 1 (AT1) capital.

Fibank’s bond issue programme was launched in December 2021 and it
has already listed four tranches of debt paper on the regulated market
of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, raising €40mn. The bonds have a
fixed annual interest rate of 8% and no pre-determined maturity date.

5.4 Markets - Croatia

Croatia’s bourse, the Zagreb Stock Exchange, was strongly affected by
the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After picking up to above
2,000 points in 2021, the Zagreb Stock Exchange’s Crobex10 sank to
around 1,900 points at the start of the war. It went above 2,100 points
for a short time in April to sink again in the following months and stay
around the 1,900 points mark.

As the market conditions were not good, not many companies decided
to launch IPOs in 2022. The IT company Span raised HRK101.19mn
from the sale of 578,200 existing shares in a public offering in
September. All of the shares in the public offering representing 29.50%
of Span's issued share capital were sold with the final sale price being
set at HRK175, at the upper end of the price range of the offering.
Span's listing was the first by a technology company on the ZSE since
July 2003 when shares of Ericsson Nikola Tesla started trading on the
Zagreb bourse.

Looking forward, Fortenova Group has said that it will most likely hold
an IPO in up to two years. One of the company’s owners, the local
businessman Pavao Vujnovac, said he would sell most of his 29%
stake in Fortenova during the IPO but gave no further details.

153 SE Outlook 2023 www.intellinews.com