Kristall Distillery in Kaluga could hold IPO mid-Feb - company

MOSCOW. Jan 26 (Interfax) - The Kristall Distillery in Kaluga could hold an initial public share offering on the Moscow Exchange in the middle of February, the company said in a press release.

"The Bank of Russia has reached a decision on the state registration of a supplementary issue and prospectus of ordinary shares of PJSC Kristall Alcohol Group (JSC KAG, the distillery's core owner). The securities issue has been assigned registration number 1-01-05421-G. The shares will be placed through open subscription," it said.

The size of the issue is not specified.

"Thus, KAG will be able to launch the initial public offering of shares on the Moscow Exchange as early as the first half of February. We plan to start a roadshow for investors in the next two weeks," Pavel Pobedkin, chairman of the board of directors and owner of KAG, was quoted as saying.

The company plans to raise 1 billion rubles with the IPO and invest them in development.

"The company is going public to finance a program of exponential business growth," it said. "Financial forecasts for the next three years assume a five-fold increase in revenue to 18.3 billion rubles in 2026, and 10-fold increase in EBITDA," the press release says.

The company's development strategy states that output will more than triple from 24 million liters in 2023 to 78 million liters by the end of 2026. The share of vodka in the sales mix will decrease from 88% at present to 33% in 2026 and the share of other products, including in-house brands of whiskey, brandy, rum, tequila and liqueurs, will increase from 12% to 67%.

KAG is the beneficiary of LLC Kaluga Distillery Kristall, one of Russia's top 10 producers of strong alcoholic beverages, which is supplies to 61 Russian regions as well as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and China.

The distillery's sales revenue was 1.499 billion rubles in H1 2023, up from 764 million rubles a year previously, while EBITDA rose to 130 million rubles from 91 million rubles.

Kristall, based in Obninsk in the Kaluga region, made its debut on the debt market in March 2023 when it sold 300 million rubles of three-year bonds on the Moscow Exchange with a quarterly coupon and yield of 14.21% to maturity.