Page 11 - bne_Magazine_May_2018_print

bne May 2018 Companies & Markets I 11
J&T Bank analyst Milan Vanicek said that although London is still the financial heart of Europe and investment potential is significant there, it is a bit disappointing that Avast doesn’t aim to be listed on the Prague bourse.
Frantisek Bostl of Starteepo company, which helps companies list shares, expressed a similar view. “The timing couldn’t
be better in relation to high pricing of the tech companies. Avast, however, should count also with the option of listing in Prague and offer the domestic investors to participate in the future growth,” Bostl said, adding that Nasdaq could be
a better choice due to uncertainty around Brexit.
Avast was taken over by CVC Capital Partners in 2014 and is looking to cash out some of the gains made since then. Other minority investors include Summit Partners and Czech entrepreneurs Pavel Baudis and Eduard Kucera, who founded the company in 1991.
Avast bought Czech competitor AVG for $1.3bn in 2016. Regarding turnover, Avast is the second biggest anti virus company in the world after Symantec, with 435mn users, out of which 260mn are PC users and 145mn mobile users.
The company had consolidated incomes in 2017 of $653mn, an annual increase of 91%. However, after making a profit
of $25mn in 2016, in 2017 the company suffered a loss of $34mn. The operating profit increased four times to $124mn.
Avast employs 1,600 people worldwide, 1,000 of them in Czechia. It has 15 branches around the globe. The most significant markets are the US, Brazil, France and fast- growing India.
Major competitors include Slovak-based ESET, US Malware- bytes and McAfee, UK Sophos and Kaspersky Lab of Russia.
Kazakhstan reportedly offers Royal Dutch Shell 10-20% stake in KazMunayGaz
bne IntelliNews
Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna has offered Royal Dutch Shell the chance to buy
a 10-20% stake in state-run oil company National Company KazMunayGaz (NC KMG), Reuters reported on March 13, citing two sources familiar with talks.
The plan is to IPO NC KMG in 2019 and make it more attractive to foreign investors. The most profitable Kazakh companies set to IPO in 2018-2020 are NC KMG, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and Kazatomprom, where
NC KMG was ranked second with a gross income of KZT104.5bn in 2017, down by 29.45% y/y. But these figures may change with the recovery of world oil prices.
While one source told the news agency the stake would stand at 10%, the second source noted Shell has been offered a chance to purchase a 20% stake.
Samruk-Kazyna holds a 90% stake in NC KMG, while
the Kazakh central bank holds the remaining 10%. NC KMG moved to delist upstream unit KMG Exploration and Production (KMG EP) on January 22 needed to make a London-listing possible.
NC KMG accounts for almost a third of Kazakhstan’s oil and gas production. The company holds a 16.9% stake in the giant Kashagan oilfield in the Caspian Sea and a 20% stake in the neighbouring Tengiz field. Combined, they are seen as the world’s largest oil discovery of recent decades.
Kazakhstan’s ongoing $70bn privatisation drive, that includes 904 companies, is 71% complete and was originally set to last four-years to 2020. In 2016-2017, the country sold 367 companies and put up another 255 facilities for liquidation or reorganisation.
The government, which has contended with a plunge in oil revenues, has said it plans to sell stakes of at least 25% in 45 large state-owned companies. The transactions are to include at least seven IPOs, including the flotation of NC KMG.
Air Astana and the world’s second largest uranium miner Kazatomprom are supposed to be sold by the fourth quarter of 2018.
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