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2 Minutes by Reuters Staff (Reuters) – ReadGDANSK (Reuters) – Shoper, a Polish e-commerce software developer, had its shares rise as much as 22% in Warsaw on Friday, riding the crest of an online shopping boom in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. With companies like sales platform Allegro, parcel locker provider InPost, and online fashion retailer Answear.com going public since last autumn, Poland’s e-commerce sector has enjoyed significant expansion in recent years, fueled in part by COVID-19 regulations. Shoper plans to more than double its client base to 50,000 retailers by 2026, claiming to have roughly 45 percent of the market for offering software as a service (SaaS) for e-commerce in Poland by customer count. “Shoper is a promising, fast-growing company with a stake in the e-commerce market. (…) The offer was fully booked at the maximum price, indicating strong institutional demand and the fact that not all funds were able to purchase as many shares as they desired “Lukasz Kosiarski, a brokerage analyst at Pekao, agreed. “In addition, between the end of the bookbuilding process and the launch, the market began to discount the probability of another pandemic-related lockdown, which would increase e-commerce, including Shoper,” he added. Noble Securities analyst Maciej Kietlinski praised the company’s impressive first-quarter results, citing revenue growth of 71 percent year over year to 15.8 million zlotys ($4.1 million) and an almost doubling of the bottom line to 4.5 million zlotys, a 92 percent gain over 2020. At Shoper’s launch, the bourse’s chief operating officer, Piotr Borowski, remarked, “I hope you will be an amazing company on our market in the long run and that you will join the main Warsaw Stock Exchange indexes quickly.” Shoper’s shares were up 14.5 percent at 53.80 zlotys a share at 0945 GMT, compared to their offer price of 47 zlotys per share. They had previously reached a high of 57.53 zlotys. $3.8356 zlotys ($1 = 3.8356 zlotys) Karol Badohal contributed reporting, while David Goodman and Mark Potter edited the piece./nRead More

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