29/01/2020 Heureka Group issues bonds in the value of CZK 2.5 billion. For the past fiscal year, its EBITDA exceeded CZK 511 million

At the end of January, Heureka Group will begin placing five-year bonds via J&T Banka and PPF Banka. At the same time, the group is releasing information on its EBITDA figures, which are driven by product innovation, market growth and data expertise. This year the group will focus on supporting Czech e-shops in their expansion, development of a unified platform and strengthening of its position in the region.

During January, Heureka Group issued a mandate to J&T Banka and PPF Banka to place bonds in the value of CZK 2.5 billion. The bonds’ interest rate reaches 5.25% p.a. with semi-annual coupon payments and maturity of five years. This is the largest volume of bonds in the e-commerce segment realised on the Czech market. Bonds with a nominal value of CZK 10,000 are being publicly offered to investors in the Czech Republic and trading of those bonds on the Prague Stock Exchange is planned. The issue coordinator is J&T Banka.

The group, which contains price-comparison platforms in some European countries, achieved EBITDA* of EUR 19.9 million (CZK 511 million**) in 2019, a 20% increase year on year. Similarly in other parameters, the group has gained significant strength recently: nine European markets, more than 20 million visitors per month and over 55,000 internet shops registered. The group has thus achieved its unambiguous status of being Europe's largest price-comparison platform and shopping advisor. For this year, Heureka Group has set itself the objective of reinforcing its position in the region.

Heureka Group's substantial growth is fuelled by several factors, one of which is product innovations in key categories, which resulted in more than 10% year on year growth of product reviews and over 20% growth in reviews of merchants. In addition to that, the Heureka team has launched a new responsive front-end in the mobile version of its website and the mobile application itself has been improved significantly. Another major innovation is the platform for providing data analytics and statistics from all nine countries, thanks to which e-shops and brands can work with relevant information on customer behaviour.

Heureka’s key role consists in the use of know-how from foreign markets to the benefit of partner e-shops. “Czech e-shops have tremendous potential for expansion beyond our borders. For example, the markets in Hungary and Romania are growing in e-commerce significantly. Heureka thus operates as a platform through which an e-shop can expand into a given country with minimal cost, while having the necessary data and information,” says Tomáš Braverman, CEO of Heureka Group. Nearly sixty Czech e-shops have already made use of this possibility and are collaborating with Heureka on their entry into regional markets. The group is working on developing the so-called “one platform” for all nine markets, which will facilitate the expansion of e-shops within the CEE region in the future without the necessity of localising those e-shops for individual countries.

Heureka Group is owned by a trio of investors consisting of PPF Group (40% share), EC Investments a.s. (40%), which is owned by entrepreneurs Daniel Křetínský, Patrik Tkáč and Roman Korbačka, and Jakub Havrlant’s Rockaway Group (20%). Last year, they separated Heureka Group from the original structure of MALL Group and set up a new board of directors responsible for fulfilling the strategy. In addition to the Czech and Slovak Heureka, the group includes the Hungarian Arukereső.hu, Romanian Compari.ro, Bulgarian Pazaruvaj.com, Slovenian Ceneje.si, Croatian Jetfinije.hr, Serbian Idealno.rs and Bosnian Idealno.ba.

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