French IT services company Europstat will begin trading on the Nouveau Marche on 11 December, following an initial public offering that raised FF42.5m ($7.58m). The company issued 185,000 new shares at FF230 ($41) each, according to finance director Fleur Brossel. The funds raised by the IPO will be used primarily to pay for Europstat’s November acquisition of the Groupe Arche SQL, a three-company group specializing in Oracle implementation and consulting, for which it paid FF35m ($6.2m). The remainder will be spent on the expansion of its network of representative offices across Europe. The company, which specializes in systems integration, consulting and training in datawarehousing, currently has a presence in the UK, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Poland, and plans to open an office in Frankfurt, Germany in February next year. In addition to the new shares issued, the founders also sold 65,000 shares, with the result that 20.2% of its equity is now traded on the stockmarket. The company expects consolidated revenues of FF132m ($23.5m) this year, with an operating margin of 5%, and for next year, when all the subsidiaries are fully up and running, Brossel predicts revenues of FF229m ($40m), with a margin of 10%.
