South African technopreneur Zak Calisto has seen his net worth surge by $159 million in the nine months following the IPO of his mobility platform, Karooooo Limited, on Nasdaq.
Karooooo is a leading global mobility SaaS platform that maximizes the value of automotive and workflow data by providing real-time data analytics solutions for smart transportation to more than 1.3 million connected vehicles.
The leading mobility platform founded by Calisto went public on March 31 in an IPO that saw it raise gross proceeds of $29.4 million from 1,050,000 ordinary shares at a price of $28 per share.
Following its IPO this year, Calisto, the founder and CEO of Karooooo, retained over two-thirds of the company’s equity, or 20,419,294 issued ordinary shares, making him the majority shareholder.
Since its debut on Nasdaq, Karooooo’s stock price has risen from $28 per share on March 31 to $35.8 per share on Dec. 29.
This translates to a 27.9-percent gain for shareholders over the past 273 days since its listing on the U.S. bourse despite the 12-percent decline in its profits from R262 million ($17.82 million) in the first half of its 2021 financial year to R231 million ($15.71 million) due to IPO costs and a 31-percent surge in operating expenses.
As a result of the 27.9-percent bump in its share price, the market value of Calisto’s 66-percent stake surged from $571.7 million on March 31 to $731 million as of the time of the drafting of this report.
This accrued gains of $159.2 million for the multimillionaire technopreneur in the past 273 days.
Calisto founded Karooooo in 2001, with an initial focus on stolen vehicle recovery services in South Africa. The company now manages the operations of Cartrack, a wholly-owned subsidiary that offers real-time mobility data analytics solutions for smart transportation.
Since 2001, Karooooo has strategically expanded into a leading international provider of smart transportation management and analytics, serving customers in 23 countries across five continents and supporting more than 1.4 million subscribers worldwide.
In the first half of its 2022 financial year, it achieved 18-percent growth in revenue, driven by a 20-percent increase in its subscriber base to 1,408,609 subscribers.
