InPost: Will history repeat itself?
My largest position could get acquired
The new year started off either great or very bad for InPost shareholders, depending on your perspective. On the one hand, shares are up almost 40% in the first few trading days of 2026, but on the other hand, the reason for this increase is a potential take private of the company. In this quick update I want to address the current state of the offer, if I expect it to close and what I believe the intrinsic value of InPost to be today (hint: It’s not €14 per share). InPost is currently my largest position at 17% with a €10.5 cost base.
Insiders knew early
Like it is the case so many times, insiders knew beforehand and shares traded up over 10% a day before the announcement. On January 6th, InPost published its statement that they received “an indicative proposal regarding a potential acquisition of all shares in the company” are forming a special committee of Supervisory and Management Board members to assess the offers to ensure all interests of the company and all stakeholders are taken into account. As a result, shares traded up to almost €15 on the day and have been hovering around €14 since then. There were many rumors about potential buyers, including Advent (private equity firm that used to own InPost and IPOed it in 2021), Amazon (InPost would be a great fit for their logistics network) and even Allegro (Polish E-Commerce leader that is building out its own locker infrastructure without much success).
Yesterday a Bloomberg article claims that Advent (6.5% ownership) is in talks to form a consortium with InPost’s CEO and Founder Rafał Brzoska (12.5% ownership) and its largest shareholder PPF (28.75% ownership). Together, they own around 47.7% of shares, so they need to acquire over half of outstanding shares. Another 5% is owned by Norges Bank, who just a few weeks ago disclosed its position. Banks supposedly also are rushing to get into a debt package for this deal, with financing up to €4.5 billion. While it is still speculation, if the banks are actually already offering to sponsor debt then it’s likely that this is true.
Will history repeat itself?
Advent used to own InPost, having invested into the company back in 2017 when it was trading on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, taking it private, turning it around and IPOing it in 2021 on the Amsterdam Euronext exchange. InPost IPOed initially in 2015 around 25 Polish Zloty and traded down significantly. The take private was at 10.87 Zloty, much higher than the lows of 7 Zloty, but over 60% below IPO.
The IPO on the Euronext was at €16, many times larger than the buyout in 2017, so Advent made a great profit with this investment. Following the IPO, shares rose at first, but during the 2022 bear market got crushed down to €5 on the lows. InPost has not been a success story if we look at the share price, but fundamentally it has developed tremendously well. I can see why the consortium wants to take it private at these low valuations. For what it’s worth, there has been an outcry from investors on X about the low price InPost is still trading at, and hopes for at least a high bid if it were to be taken private. Let’s take a look at my scenarios for InPost and what I see as a realistic fair value range.
Valuation
In my previous article, I shared a three model scenario for InPost’s expansion and cash flows in the coming years. You can look at the details in the last post, nothing changed besides the price. At the current price of €14 we are around my average bear case price. In the base case I see a much higher upside from the current price, so I’d be very disappointed if a buyout offer was under €18, which is the low range of my base case.
I find it very unfortunate that InPost will likely get delisted, as I see it as a fantastic long-term compounder with an asymmetric set of return probabilities. In the best case, I see it becoming a 5x in 2030. The alleged consortium owns around half of the shares, so they still have a long way to go and only one big shareholder with Norges Bank (5% ownership) to convince. All other shares need to be bought in the open market. It will be interesting to observe this situation going forward. Hopefully we’ll get at least a good compensation for a take private.
