Whoosh Holding repurchases shares for 36 mln rubles in Dec as part of buyback program

MOSCOW. March 29 (Interfax) - PJSC Whoosh Holding, operator of the Whoosh kick-sharing service, repurchased shares for 35.99 million rubles in December as part of the buyback program, the company said in a financial statement.

Whoosh Holding repurchased 174,372 shares overall in December, or around 0.16% of the equity capital.

Whoosh Holding, in the presentation for its 2023 financial statement, said that the company had repurchased 269,000 securities as on March 27, 2024, without specifying the amount of funds spent on the buyback.

Whoosh Holding's board of directors approved the company's share repurchase program in November 2023. The maximum number of shares within the buyback is 1.5 million, around 1.35% of the equity capital, which is one third of the requirement for the option program. The presentation for the 2023 financial statements indicates that the current plan is to buy back around 1 million securities.

The buyback program is valid until May 31, 2025, inclusive. The stock acquisition period is one year from the date of approval of the program by the board of directors.

Whoosh Holding plans to use the repurchased shares for the long-term employee incentive program, which was also approved in November. The company plans to purchase no more than 4.5 million securities, around 4% of the equity capital, for the program.

The company said that it plans to approve new programs for the acquisition of its own shares, "so that the total number of securities and the duration of the buyback programs correspond to the parameters of the long-term incentive program."

Whoosh develops technological solutions for micro-mobility transport, and is the largest Russian operator of the same-name kick-sharing service. Whoosh is present in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and the service is operating in Brazil, Chile, and Peru as part of a pilot project.

PJSC Whoosh Holding, the parent company of the Whoosh group, held an IPO in December 2022, during which it raised 2.1 billion rubles. The share of the free float is around 10% of the equity capital based on the results of the IPO.

Whoosh Holding boosted revenue from kick-sharing services by 1.7-fold year-on-year to 10.73 billion rubles to International Financial Reporting Standards in 2023. Net profit surged 2.3-fold to 1.94 billion rubles, and the net debt/EBITDA ratio rose to 1.9x from 1.1x.