VimpelCom Plans To Broaden Investor Base
VimpelCom Ltd. — the Bermuda-domiciled Russian mobile phone operator with more than 200 million customers worldwide — is planning a share listing outside the US to broaden its investor base, the Bloomberg financial news service reports today [Nov. 18].
VimpelCom was formed last year after shareholders Telenor ASA TEL and Alfa Group combined their Russian and Ukrainian wireless holdings into a company incorporated in Bermuda with its headquarters in Amsterdam.
Since then, MSCI Barra has dropped the company from its global indexes. This year, VimpelCom completed a merger with Italy’s Wind Telecom SpA.
“We are looking at indexes and inclusion in indexes, we are looking at a European listing,” Jo Lunder said in an interview yesterday at a conference in Barcelona organised by Morgan Stanley. “During the first half of 2012 we will make a decision and implement it during the second half.”
VimpelCom has listed its American depository receipts on the New York Stock Exchange since 1997, the first Russian company to do that. Those shares are down 27 percent this year. The old VimpelCom previously had a listing in Russia.
Earlier this week, in the company’s first major strategy briefing since its merger with Wind, VimpelCom Chief Financial Officer Henk van Dalen said the company has 18 percent free float and is in 10 indexes.
Bloomberg reported VimpelCom is aiming for a dividend of at least 80 cents a share through 2014. The stock fell 0.7 percent to $11.05 yesterday in New York, giving the company a market value of about $17.9 billion.
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