Kyivstar parent Veon and Betsy Cohen trim stakes
Kyivstar came with a US$131.3m all-secondary follow-on offering late on Thursday to allow its largest shareholder and SPAC merger partner to cash out a portion of their gains.
The Ukrainian telecom company’s shares fell 6.5% to US$11.27 around noon Friday, still above the US$10.50 offer price and the US$10 price at which it went public via merger with Betsy Cohen’s Circle Acquisition I SPAC in August last year.
Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Cantor and Rothschild were joint bookrunners pricing the offering of 12.5m secondary shares.
Kyivstar filed registration statements for the stock late last year, so the offering was not unexpected.
Veon, the United Arab Emirates-based parent prior to the SPAC merger, sold 12.1m shares and Cohen Circle the remaining 400,000 shares. Both are subject to a 60-day lockup after the sale.
At launch, Kyivstar expects to grow US-dollar denominated adjusted Ebitda by 19%–22% in 2025 on a 20%–23% growth in revenue. In 2024, the company generated US$515m of Ebitda on revenues of US$919m.
Veon trimmed its stake in Kyivstar to 83.6% and Cohen Circle to 0.7%.
Kyivstar went public on Nasdaq in August via a merger with Cohen Circle Acquisition, in one of the few de-SPAC transactions supported by a majority of shareholders and had low redemptions.
Set up by legendary SPAC sponsor Betsy Cohen, often dubbed the SPAC queen, Cohen Circle Acquisition raised US$230m in 2024, in which Cohen committed US$4.5m.
Kyivstar provides unique exposure to war-torn Ukraine. The operator earlier this month launched pilot 5G service in Lviv and also launched its Starlink direct-to-cell service in November, reaching 3m customers. It plans to expand its 5G coverage to Kyiv later this year.