

Will Bitdefender Be Romania's First Tech IPO? - mirceagoia
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/07/09/will-bitdefender-be-romanias-first-tech-ipo/

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fierarul
This is a horribly written article!

Almost the entire first page is spent on telling the reader some ancient facts
about Romania as if it's a newly discovered continent. It kinda tries to force
some history into context but it's generally really bad.

Second, you have much more transparency in Romania for companies, even if they
are privately held. So this quote is rather pointless and shows no homework
was done:

> Although it’s privately-held, Talpes told me that it employs 670 people —
> 10% more than in 2011. Publicly-traded competitor, AVG (AVG), has $295
> million in revenues and 870 employees — $339,000 in revenues per employee —
> and a net profit margin of 32%.

You can totally look online[1,2,3] for informations on the Bitdefender company
and see that, for example, in 2010 it has about 30 million euro in revenue (so
that's about 45,000 euro per employee) and a net profit of only 250,000 euro
which means a margin of 0.7%. (PS: I would love to learn how they managed to
pay so little taxes!)

I think an IPO is a good idea, but I would love if Romania would start to be
known for something other than antivirus solutions. The other big thing we had
was the sale or RAV (Romania Anti Virus) to Microsoft in the early 2000s.

BTW, an IPO is a big thing here because generally we don't use the stock
market to finance companies. We use banks, which also explains why our
companies aren't that innovative.

1\. <http://www.firme.info/bitdefender-srl-cui18189442/> 2\.
[http://www.doingbusiness.ro/financial/report/541390/bitdefen...](http://www.doingbusiness.ro/financial/report/541390/bitdefender-
srl/) 3\. <http://www.listafirme.ro/bitdefender-srl-18189442/>

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ds_
I'm not sure they're even facts. Was Ceausescu beheaded?

~~~
icehero
Nope. Shot.

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Zenst
I'm finding articles on forbes.com to be overly padded with uneeded and
unwanted negatives with no relavance.

The article has a great subject and a worthy one to mention as its and
achivement but instead spends most of its time explaining all the bad things
somebody grepped from a wiki article. "Most people don’t know that Romania is
more than just the murderous Communist dictator who was beheaded in 1989. It
was also featured in a November 4, 1994 Seinfeld episode, " being a case of
well we don't know nor care as has nothing to do with this IPO.

Would they explain a facebook IPO as something done by a load of people who
turned up on indian shores without greencards back many years ago.... No as it
has no relevance whatsoever.

Kudos to Bitdefender for doing there IPO - which stock market is it to be
listed upon?

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mirceagoia
From that article I extracted a possible outcome: Bitdefender may go public.
That the country is not well known in the world that's a fact. Few small
countries are well known.

~~~
Zenst
It's only slightly smaller than the whole of the United Kingdom.

But your summary is more astute than the article.

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ds_
I don't think he meant land area.

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mirceagoia
Yes, I didn't mean the land but the people.

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mirceagoia
As a Romanian I am waiting for this. More Romanian companies should try to go
public and maybe Bitdefender will lead the way.

~~~
radu_cugut
I'm also proud, as a Romanian, to see this in the news and happening.

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NostalgiaCritic
Does anybody really care about that?

