News: Mitula Group looks to raise $26.5M through fully underwritten IPO

Mitula Group is a vertical search website operator seeking to raise $26.5 million through a fully underwritten initial public offering of 35.36 million shares priced at $0.75 each.

Proceeds will be used to facilitate opportunistic acquisitions and enhance its capital management flexibility.

The IPO is fully underwritten by Baillieu Holst Limited.

The company currently has a portfolio of 51 websites in 38 countries and in 14 languages. These are operated under two main brands, Mitula and Nestoria.

In April 2015, the websites received 51 million visits and featured 234 million aggregated classifieds listings from approximately 13,000 advertisers.

Mitula generates revenue through two main sources, Direct CPC Revenue generated from the sale of approximately 60% of the ‘Click Outs’ and revenue from Google AdSense advertisements.

The company generated revenue of $16.2 million and EBITDA of $6.3 million in CY2014 representing a compound annual growth rate in revenue of 41.3% and EBITDA of 151.8% from CY2012.

Based on this strong historical pro forma performance, Mitula could well be on track to meet its pro forma forecast revenue of $26.2 million, EBITDA of $13.3 million and net profit of $10.1 million in the 12 months to 30th June 2016.

Mitula Group’s vertical search functionality gives its website users the ability to search across classifieds listings from multiple verticals, being real estate, automotive, employment, and, in some countries holiday rentals, and obtain search results from multiple advertisers with one search query.

With access to the search results of multiple advertisers, users are offered a more convenient and efficient search experience than performing a search on a single advertiser’s website

In April 2015, the websites received 51 million visits and featured 234 million aggregated classifieds listings from approximately 13,000 advertisers.

To continue growing the business, the company will seek to:

- Continue the roll out of Mitula and Nestoria websites into new countries;
- Launch Nestoria websites to complement existing Mitula websites;
- Improve and strengthen the Mitula Group’s mobile website and app offering;
- Accelerate new product and technology innovation;
- Increase the number of advertisers who pay the Mitula Group to receive Click Outs;
- Omprove the ratio of visits to Click Outs; and
- Pursue value adding acquisitions.

Mitula’s proposed code will be MUA.

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