• Company Name: Avast Software
• Products: Develops and markets security products for servers, desktops and mobile devices to consumers and business.
• Exchange: London Stock Exchange (LSE)
• IronFX Ticker: Avast
• Potential IPO Date: 10th of May 2018
• Shares to be sold: 25% of the company
• Estimated range of share prices: £2.50-£3.20 (250-320 pence)
• Estimated total proceeds: around $200 million
• Coordinator(s) for offering: Morgan Stanley, UBS

Information

Avast, one of the largest cybersecurity firms world-wide, aims to raise $200 million from the issue of new shares.

As per the company’s announcement of intention to float:

“the Group intends to use the primary proceeds of the offer to reduce its overall indebtedness, which is expected to provide it with greater financial flexibility”.

The financials seem to favor the company which has increased its revenue from $340.7 million in 2016 to $652.9 million in 2017.

The company has also increased its operating profit from $31.9 million in 2016 to 124.3 million in 2017.

Other than that, Avast is 46% owned by Pavel Baudis and Eduard Kucera (the founders of the company), 29% owned by CVC Capital Partners and Summit Partners holding 7%.

We expect that the IPO will grab the market’s attention as the listing is expected to be the biggest from the perspective of market capitalization in London (targeted market capitalization between $2.5 and $3.2 billion), since July 2017 as suggested by Reuters.