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"Editor\u2019s note:\u00A0This article originally\u00A0appeared on East-West Digital News, a leading English-language resource on Russian digital industries and related venture activity.\r\n\r\nLuxoft, a major offshore software developer headquartered in Moscow,\u00A0announced\u00A0yesterday that it has filed a registration statement for a proposed initial public offering of its Class A ordinary shares. The book-running managers in the operation will be UBS Limited, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, VTB Capital, and Cowen and Company.\r\n\r\nAccording to the\u00A0filing, Luxoft is expecting to raise $80 million during the IPO \u2013 although this number may change closer to the offering date.\r\n\r\nIn the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2013, the company posted $314.6 million in revenue, showing 16 percent year-to-year growth.\r\n\r\nFounded in 2000, Luxoft is part of the IBS Group, where it accounts for 87 percent\u00A0of the group\u2019s valuation \u2013 some $519 million, according to an analysis conducted last year by\u00A0Uralsib Capital. The company currently employs more than 5,900 people in development offices in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, Vietnam, Romania, Germany and Poland, as well as in marketing offices in the US and on Cyprus.\r\n\r\nLuxoft recently expanded its US presence by\u00A0acquiring\u00A0the open-source solutions of Freedom OSS for an undisclosed sum.\r\n\r\nBeyond software outsourcing, Luxoft\u2019s strong points include human-machine interfaces (HMI) for next-gen automotive solutions. In its\u00A0December 2012 review\u00A0of the auto sector\u2019s most far-reaching trends, Gartner\u00A0named Luxoft\u00A0among the world\u2019s four key providers of connected vehicle technology and services, including such important functional areas as telematics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs), infotainment, and mobility services.\r\n\r\n\u201COne of the strengths of this company lies in its human resource assets: they have attracted the cream of the crop of Russian IT specialists,\u201D said industry veteran Nikolai Puntikov in an exchange with East West Digital News. \u201CHowever, Luxoft still faces the challenge of translating this into more tangible and protectable IP assets.\u201D\r\n\r\n\u201CThis IPO will be good news for Russia\u2019s IT industry,\u201D Puntikov added. \u201CIt will reinforce the international image of Russian programmers and companies, and it\u2019s this kind of success story that may stimulate the interest of entrepreneurs and financiers in this sector.\u201D\r\nRussian tech companies go West\r\nOver the last few years several Russian tech companies have sought introduction on Western stock exchanges, where the volume of available funding is far more significant than on the still little developed local capital markets. In October 2010\u00A0Mail.Ru Group, one of the leading players on the Russian Internet scene, was introduced on the London Stock Exchange. In May 2011 the search giant Yandex\u00A0raised $1.3 billion\u00A0during its NASDAQ IPO.\r\n\r\nAt the beginning of 2012\u00A0EPAM Systems, a CEE-oriented offshore software developer and one of Luxoft\u2019s rivals, also\u00A0launched\u00A0a NASDAQ IPO. The results, however, were lower than the company had expected: instead of the forecast valuation of $650 to $730 million, EPAM Systems was valued at about $490 million.\r\n\r\nThe trend of going public on Western stock exchanges was also supported by Russian mobile operator Megafon, which\u00A0raised $1.7 billion\u00A0in November 2012 by trading approximately 15 percent\u00A0of its shares on the London and Moscow stock exchanges simultaneously. A more recent example is the\u00A0$212 million NASDAQ IPO\u00A0by the payment operator\u00A0Qiwi\u00A0earlier this month.\r\n\r\nThere are also players on the Russian market who have already announced IPO plans but have not yet filed official statements. Among these are online fashion shopping club\u00A0KupiVip.ru, which has one more year to live up to its\u00A0IPO promise, and airline ticket booking site OneTwoTrip, with a Western IPO\u00A0planned\u00A0for 2014.\r\n\r\nSome Russian companies have not succumbed to the tempting prospects of public offering, however.\u00A0Kaspersky Lab\u2019s CEO Eugene Kaspersky\u00A0announced\u00A0in February that in order to remain as flexible as possible the company had abandoned IPO ambitions and would buy back a 20 percent\u00A0stake sold to a private equity investor in 2012.\r\n\r\nLast year Vontakte.ru (VK.com),\u00A0the biggest Russian social network,\u00A0postponed its IPO indefinitely; as CEO Pavel Durov put it, \u201CFacebook\u2019s IPO has destroyed the trust of many individual investors in social networks.\u201D However, the UCP fund, a new major Vkontakte shareholder,\u00A0stated recently\u00A0that it an IPO could take place after \u201Cthree or four years of development of the company and an increase of its valuation.\u201D\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nImage credit: Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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