CVC Capital Partners is looking to list Polish convenience store chain Zabka in what could be the third biggest private equity-backed float in Central and Eastern Europe—a further sign that European IPOs are making a comeback for the PE market.
The firm acquired Zabka—which translates as “little frog"—in 2017 when the store had around 4,500 stores. Today, the company has more than doubled its footprint to around 10,500 stores. The company has also recently expanded into the Romanian market through the acquisition of DRIM.
Bloomberg reported in June that the company could be valued at as much as $8 billion, raising up to $1.5 billion in the listing.
The IPO will involve selling existing shares to institutional and retail investors, with all money raised going to existing shareholders.
This Zabka IPO could be the largest on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since the record-breaking €2.1 billion (about $2.3 billion) IPO of BlackPines and Cinven-backed ecommerce company Allegro in 2020, which valued the company at €9.6 billion.
PE-backed IPO activity in Central and Eastern Europe has been relatively slow since 2020, with only a handful of major listings in the past couple of years, according to PitchBook data.
However, the anticipated Zabka IPO could make 2024 the biggest year by total IPO value in the region since 2020, surpassing the total €2.5 billion recorded in 2023 and €4.9 billion in 2021.
More widely in Europe, PE-backed IPOs are also growing again after undergoing a difficult time in 2022. So far in 2024, we have seen two of the top 15 European IPOs in the last five years.
CVC Capital Partners itself is one of these. After postponing its public listing twice, the PE firm went public last August with a valuation of around €14 billion.
ADIA and EQT-backed Galderma also went public in 2024 at an exit value of €8 billion.
Polish convenience store chain Zabka.
Featured image by NurPhoto/Getty Images
