Cloud-Storage Provider OVH, Holders Raise $464 Million in IPO

(Bloomberg) -- OVH Groupe and its backers raised 400 million euros ($464 million) in an initial public offering in Paris that will help the cloud-storage provider to finance its competition with Amazon.com Inc. and accelerate its international expansion.

The shares were priced at 18.50 euros apiece, the bottom of the range at which they were marketed, the company said in an emailed statement late Thursday. The deal values OVHcloud, as the company is known, at about 3.5 billion euros. The stock begins trading Friday. 

The company raised 350 million euros from the sale of new shares, less than the 400 million euros it was initially targeting. Existing holders, including private equity firms KKR & Co. and TowerBrook Capital Partners, raised 50 million euros. Founder Octave Klaba and his family will remain majority shareholders. 

There’s been a flurry of French IPOs this fall, with companies trying to take advantage of buoyant markets. Worries over a possible stock slump and lofty valuations have since prompted some companies, including health-care property company Icade Sante SAS, to pull their planned offerings. 

The company had a setback this year when a fire destroyed one of four data centers in Strasbourg, France, and damaged another. OVHcloud also was hit by an outage on its networks this week.

Based in Roubaix near the Belgian border, OVHcloud leases out storage and processing power to customers such as tiremaker Michelin and the French presidential palace. Besides Amazon Web Services, its competitors include Microsoft Corp.’s Azure division and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud.

Klaba started the business in 1999, opening his first storage site in Paris with a loan from telecom entrepreneur Xavier Niel. Underwriters can place additional shares in the IPO if there’s enough demand, which would take the deal size to 460 million euros.

BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and KKR Capital Markets were the global coordinators, along with bookrunners Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Societe Generale SA, while CIC is co-lead manager.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.