Croatia: Craft brewer Garden Brewery to start trading on Zagreb Stock Exchange

The shares of Croatian craft beer maker The Garden Brewery will start trading on the Zagreb Stock Exchange (ZSE) on June 12, the bourse operator said on June 9.

A total of 80,807 company shares with a nominal value of 500 kuna ($75/66 euro) each will start trading on the bourse's regular market, following a request for their listing submitted by The Garden Brewery on June 8, ZSE said in a statement.

In April, the Croatian financial regulator approved the brewer's share listing prospectus, noting that the company, which is active in a sector exposed to high risk in the coronavirus crisis, plans to focus on online sales in the coming period.

The largest single shareholder of The Garden Brewery is local mandatory pension fund AZ B category with a 30.82% stake, followed by local individual Milan Badelj with 29.72%, and voluntary pension fund AZ Profit with 9.9%, the company's prospectus posted on the ZSE website showed.

AZ pension funds are managed by Allianz ZB, a company owned by Allianz Zagreb and Croatia's Zagrebacka Banka.

In October, AZ pension funds injected 20 million kuna into the capital of The Garden Brewery, acquiring a 49.5% ownership stake and entering the segment of small and medium-sized companies.

The head of The Garden Brewery's supervisory board, Tomislav Alpeza, said at the time that the company plans to use the proceeds from the capital increase to expand its production capacities in order to strengthen its position on existing markets and to conquer new ones.

The Zagreb-based brewery produces 7,000 hectolitres of beer per year and sells 30% of its output abroad, in the UK, Germany, Denmark and Australia, among others.