Mo-BRUK is the leader of the Polish industrial waste processing industry, including hazardous waste, as well as the largest WSE-listed company in the waste processing industry, which is part of the global trend of building a ‘circular economy’.
The company uses waste to produce, among other things, alternative fuels, which are a valuable energy resource, and – based on its own patented technology – produces artificial aggregate used, for example, in road construction or as reclamation material. The Mo-BRUK Group owns two incineration plants where, among other things, medical and hazardous waste is treated. The company’s shares have been listed on the main floor of the WSE since 2012, but the free-float has been around 2% for several years.
In 2020, the company’s main shareholders Ginger Capital (the Mokrzycki family) and the Value FIZ fund decided to sell part of their stake through a public offering. TAILORS Group was engaged to support the communication of the transaction. Our role was to develop and implement a comprehensive communication policy for the company and the public offering. An important element of the activities was to emphasise the specific nature of the company’s operations in line with the idea of ESG investing.
The main challenge of the project
- Prior to working with TAILORS Group, Mo-BRUK’s media presence was very limited. The company did not actively send out press releases and there was very limited interest from financial journalists in the company’s activities. As a result of this, the number of media articles about the company was low, and those that did appear were mainly about local issues and presented the company not always in a favourable light.
- The waste treatment industry is negatively perceived in the public space. Due to the large-scale grey market operating for years and illegal landfills springing up all over the country, most publications in the media are unfavourable towards companies in this sector of the economy. The certain nuisance of waste treatment plants means that many articles about companies in the sector, especially in the local press, are devoted to conflicts with the local community.
- There is a lack of companies on the WSE comparable to Mo-BRUK operating in the waste processing industry. This required extensive education of investors and journalists about the industry in which the company operates. Moreover, the industrial, traditional nature of the company did not fit in with the trend of investors favouring gaming, biotechnology and renewable energy companies.
Effects of TAILORS Group activities
The Mo-BRUK IPO, supported by our communication support, was successful and all the offered shares were placed. Shareholders selling shares raised PLN 281 million, and the company gained a wide range of new institutional and individual investors.
Despite the company’s operation in an industry that is not among the most popular among investors and the media, thanks to active communication we built strong interest in Mo-BRUK among the target groups and created an atmosphere of anticipation for the offering. During the five months since the start of our cooperation, we prepared and sent to the media dozens of press releases about Mo-BRUK’s activities, which resulted in several hundred publications, including in financial and industry media, which were key from the point of view of the transaction.
During the preparatory activities preceding the launch of the offering, we built a new Mo-BRUK website, including a section dedicated to investor relations and the public offering. We also organised media training for the company’s top managers.
During the subscription period, we coordinated an online advertising campaign that generated nearly 5 million banner impressions and more than 5,200 hits to the offering website at a very favourable rate. We accomplished this in just five days of accepting subscriptions from individual investors. During the offering, we organised an investor chat for the company in cooperation with strefainwestorow.pl. More than 1 100 investors participated in the chat, which is one of the best results in the history of the partner’s organisation of such events.
All activities conducted took into account the epidemic situation related to COVID-19 and were conducted online due to the limited possibility of meetings.
We are currently continuing our cooperation with the company, which has been promoted to the WIG40 index thanks to the increasing scale of its operations and greater investor interest. The company’s development is followed by a wide range of individual and institutional investors, including foreign investors from Europe, North America and Asia.