Polish parcel locker company InPost, widely used by sellers on Allegro, says it is planning an Amsterdam IPO as early as February
* Advent-backed firm could be valued at 7-8 bln euros — * Wants to expand in France, Italy and Spain — * Says first listing possible in February (Adds InPost CEO comments)
Context & Ripple Effects
InPost's locker network is the delivery backbone for sellers on Allegro, which had already announced plans for its own Warsaw listing targeting a €10-12 billion valuation five months earlier — Poland's two dominant e-commerce players going public in the same cycle. The Advent-backed firm is pitching Amsterdam rather than Warsaw, with a €7-8 billion valuation range and stated ambitions in France, Italy and Spain.
The arc that follows makes this filing a pivot point: the deal prices at €14-16 per share [[a:1160383]] and lands as Europe's biggest IPO since 2018 at over €8 billion [[a:962495]], but within a year the stock has lost more than 70% of its value and drawn takeover interest from CVC [[a:977278]], ending in a €7.8 billion consortium buyout led by Advent, FedEx, A&R and PPF [[a:1163068]].
First-order effects
- InPost converts Advent's stake into listed equity and banks up to €3.2 billion of fresh capital earmarked for its France, Italy and Spain expansion, while Allegro sellers' core delivery infrastructure becomes a publicly traded company on Amsterdam's exchange rather than Warsaw's.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent parcel operators in France, Italy and Spain face a newly capitalized entrant buying locker density in their home markets, and Allegro's parallel Warsaw listing rides the same investor appetite for Polish e-commerce infrastructure.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — a record-setting IPO, a 70%-plus drawdown, CVC circling, and finally a €7.8 billion take-private with FedEx at the table — suggests public markets systematically underpriced locker networks relative to strategic and private-equity buyers, pushing Europe's parcel-locker consolidation back into private hands.
The trend: European e-commerce logistics infrastructure is cycling from private-equity build-out through headline IPOs back into consortium ownership, with automated locker networks as the asset both publics and privates are fighting to price.