The first secondary trading in B2B-RTS shares ended with a 7.5% increase in quotes. Over the past year, this is the first time the share price has risen immediately after an IPO. This effect was achieved due to a significant reduction in the placement price compared to the fair valuation of the company. Despite ambitious plans to increase the number of initial offerings, experts doubt that other issuers will follow the example of B2B-RTS in the near future.
The first exchange trading in shares of the electronic trading platform B2B-RTS (part of the Sovcombank group) ended with a confident increase in quotations. During trading on April 17, quotes rose to 129 rubles, and at closing they amounted to 126.9 rubles, exceeding the IPO price by 7.5%. At the same time, investor activity was quite high: the trading volume exceeded 700 million rubles. (with a placement volume of 2.43 billion rubles). Last year, in primary trading after all IPOs, company shares fell in price by 1.5–4.5%.
Such positive results for investors were achieved due to a significant discount to the fair valuation of the issuer, market participants indicate.
As Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn notes, “the IPO price was one and a half times lower than analysts’ estimates on the eve of the announcement of the IPO price” (see. “Kommersant” from April 11).
As a result, the order book, according to the company, was repeatedly oversubscribed at the upper limit of the initial range (RUB 112–118). According to a Kommersant source on the stock market, the volume of applications exceeded the supply volume by 4.5 times.
The company said that high demand was generated by both institutional and private investors. But, judging by the results of the allocation, it was private investors who provided such oversubscription – taking into account the fact that they accounted for 63% of the placement volume (the maximum share in placements since the beginning of 2024), the average size of satisfied applications was only 11%.
According to the head of the investment consulting department of Veles Capital Investment Company, Dmitry Sergeev, the IPO attracted many speculators who planned to sell the shares after the price growth.
At the same time, six portfolio managers interviewed by Kommersant stated that they did not participate in the IPO using mutual funds. “We considered participating in the transaction because the price was attractive, but decided not to do so due to unfavorable market conditions. As a last resort, it will be possible to buy shares on the secondary market if the situation begins to improve,” says Kommersant’s interlocutor in a large management company. Another management company noted that their individual clients participated in the transaction as part of trust management strategies.
However, a significant part of investors were probably focused on the company’s long-term prospects, taking into account its fundamental indicators and dividend policy, says Valeria Popova, senior analyst at Ricom-Trust Investment Company. “B2B-RTS can become a good dividend story. I think that many investors participating in the IPO were looking at the increased dividend yield,” says one stock fund manager.
The total volume of transactions on the B2B-RTS platform in 2025 amounted to almost 10 trillion rubles. The company’s revenue according to IFRS at the end of last year increased by 11%, to 8 billion rubles. Net profit increased by 6%, to RUB 3.7 billion.
According to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors in the financial market, there is no point in expecting a sharp increase in B2B-RTS quotes in the future. With a small placement volume and a relatively low free-float (11.5%), the liquidity of securities on the secondary market will be weak, which will increase the volatility of quotes, market participants note.
To fulfill the government’s stated plans to fill the stock market with new issuers, prices will have to be reduced, but not all owners are ready for this. In February, Deputy Director of the Financial Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance Pavel Shakhlevich said that 14 IPOs are expected this year. As Kommersant’s interlocutor notes in the financial market, in order to ensure success, B2B-RTS had to provide a significant discount to the price of shares, but this is unlikely to serve as an example for other companies. “To a greater extent, the owners’ strategy will be influenced by the dynamics of the key rate and the level of liquidity in the stock market,” he believes.
