CEE Equity

A Pln700m ($168.9m) selldown of stock in Play Communications, the Polish telecommunications company, has shown that investor appetite towards some emerging market stocks is still alive, despite the asset class being hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yandex, the Russian internet company, reopened the equity-linked bond primary market in EMEA after more than a month without any new issues, with a $1.25bn five year convertible bond. The deal was priced at the midpoint of the terms, suggesting healthy demand.

Two large Moscow listings moved closer to launch this week, a boost for Russian equity investors who have not seen any large IPO activity since the Detsky Mir listing in 2017.

Sibur, the Russian petrochemicals company, is unlikely to go public in 2020 because of unfavourable macroeconomic conditions, its CFO tells GlobalCapital.

Equity capital markets investors should prepare for a pipeline of new Russian stock market listings for as early as this year, according to several bankers working on the deals. A strong year for block sales in 2019 will be followed by some sizeable IPO activity on the Moscow exchange.

Investors warmly welcomed a TL2.6bn ($440m) block trade in Turkish bank Yapi Kredi on Wednesday night. But market participants are yet to be convinced that the country’s equity capital markets are fully reopened.

Turkey's primary equity capital markets opened for the first time since 2018 on Wednesday as an undisclosed group of shareholders set out to sell 1.9% of Akbank.

Russian issuance has been a success story in what has otherwise been a largely disappointing year for the EMEA equity capital markets. Positive momentum should carry through into 2020 with hope that IPOs will follow a good year for blocks and beef up the Russian stock market

Russian equity capital markets activity has been on fire with $3.5bn of issuance so far this year, up 369.5% from the year before, and market conditions suggest next year could be even better.

Russian conglomerate Sistema and the Russia-China Investment Fund have sold a Rb15.9bn ($249.7m) chunk of stock in Detsky Mir, the Russian toy store, after a fully marketed offering designed to boost the freefloat of the company and diversify the shareholder base.

Credit Bank of Moscow has finished a Rb14.7bn ($231m) primary share sale which will allow it to buy back debt to improve the composition of its regulatory capital.

Credit Bank of Moscow is seeking to sell 2.75bn new shares through a fully marketed share sale, to fund a debt buyback to improve the composition of its regulatory capital.