IPO makes Fix Price founders Khachatryan, Lomakin worth $3.6B each

PanARMENIAN.Net - The founders of a Russian dollar store called Fix Price, Sergei Lomakin and Artem Khachatryan (the latter is of Armenian descent) are now worth $3.6 billion each, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as their initial public offering in Moscow and London is proving popular among investors.

The IPO is poised to be the biggest from a Russian company in more than a decade, and trading of the GDRs in London opened at the listing price.

The two founders, who together owned 83% of Fix Price before the listing, established the store in 2007 to provide basic goods at predictable, cheap prices, which quickly became a hit among Russian consumers and attracted a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. It’s now the nation’s biggest dollar-store retailer.

Fix Price has prospered as wages in Russia struggled to recover from the 2014 ruble collapse and the coronavirus pandemic sent shoppers flocking to its stores. Sales have increased for 16 consecutive quarters, with the number of outlets doubling in five years.

The retailer sells everything from food to cleaning products and cosmetics for less than 249 rubles ($3.40), rotating in about 50 new items each week to appeal to “treasure hunters.” The company now has more than 4,000 stores in Russia and former Soviet Union countries including Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.