Director of Equity Financing, FINAM Investment Company, Moscow
Last week marked the first listing by a Russian IT company on the
Armada grew from the IT Department of RosBusinessConsulting (RTC:RBCI) group of companies in 2007. Between 2000 and 2007 the company operated under the RBC Soft brand. Armada’s solutions portfolio covers all IT market sectors, including software development, IT services and hardware. In 2003, while still part of RBC Information Systems, RBC SOFT was rated 15th among Russia's top 45 companies in the Standard & Poor’s Transparency Survey in 2003. Armada’s client base counts over 700 companies operating in various economic sectors and governmental organizations.
On May 23, 2007, OAO Armada’s shares were listed on the RTS and MICEX exchanges, and now the company has issued an IPO listing another 20% of its equity. According to some analysts the company will likely raise anywhere from $ 30 to $40 million.
A couple of months ago I posted on Russia Blog ("Investing in Russia's IT Sector: Is it Worth Your While?" about this topic). Those of you that read Russian may get some additional information from Armada’s prospectus
The prospectus notes that in the last two years there has been a strong interest in the Russian IT sector on the part of Western investors. There are eight new specialized IT centers open in Russia, established by global IT industry players like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), Alcatel (NYSE:ALU), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Siemens (NYSE:SI), and Linux. On another note, it should be mentioned that Microsoft maintains a quality Russian website that uses a lot of useful techniques to help Russian users and IT experts navigate and use its products.
Anyway, we are watching the new IPO and feel that these may represent a good start for Russian IT companies in their quest for global market share.
You can read the original post at Vladimir Kuznetsov's blog, Equity Financing in Russia. The views expressed in this post and on his blog are the personal opinions of Vladimir Kuznetsov, and are reproduced here solely for educational purposes. To read more Russia Blog posts about Russian capital markets, click on the finance section or type www.russiablog.org/finance in your web browser.
