Bittnet Group raises EUR 2 mln from Bucharest Stock Exchange investors in a private placement for corporate bonds

Bittnet, a group of IT companies listed on the Main Market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB), said it successfully closed a private placement for corporate bonds, during which 53 investors subscribed 20,596 euro-denominated bonds.

The private placement ran between December 21 and 27. The company said the offer was oversubscribed as it overpassed the targeted maximum threshold of 20,000 bonds and was therefore supplemented.

The raised financing is EUR 1,961,144. The bonds with a nominal value of EUR 100 have a maturity of 42 months, the interest rate is 9% per year, and the coupon is payable quarterly.

The euro bonds will be listed on one of BVB’s markets, AeRO or the Main Market, with the management’s preference for the latter, Bittnet said. The company intends to have the bonds listed in the first quarter of 2023, before the payment of the first coupon, which will take place in April 2023, to the investors who hold the bonds as of the end of March 2023.

“Since our listing in 2015, we have promised to continuously use capital market mechanisms to finance an accelerated growth story in an economically favored industry: Romanian IT. The trust shown by investors in the eight years since the listing allowed us to grow from a company with revenues of RON 8 million in 2014 to a group with a cumulative business of approximately 250 million this year,” said Mihai Logofatu, CEO of Bittnet Group.

The capital raised will most likely be used to finance the acquisition of a 70% stake in Dataware Consulting SRL (Dataware), an IT&C integrator of products and services, that will join the “Cloud & Infrastructure” business group within the Technology Division of Bittnet Group. The transaction is subject to approval by the Competition Council.

“We are thrilled that despite all the challenges the local capital market has withstood this year, the stock market works, and solid companies with a proven track record can raise capital. In our case, the success of this offer is, in our view, driven by the fact that year-by-year, since 2015, Bittnet’s financial results have been supported by a strong cash flow. This gives the investors sense of security when choosing to invest in Bittnet. We will always keep this promise to our investors. In 2023, depending on the needs of the Group as well as on the market conditions, we intend to carry out other financing rounds by issuing bonds, preferably through successive public offers,” said Cristian Logofatu, co-founder at Bittnet Group.

BRK Financial Group intermediated the private placement. The issuance is the sixth bond issuance for Bittnet Group, which to date has already repaid in advance two of the corporate bonds – BNET19, with a total value of RON 4.2 million and BNET22 in the total amount of RON 4.5 million. The remaining three issuances, BNET23, BNET23A, and BNET23C, will reach maturity in 2023.