Telegram has fully redeemed its convertible bonds issued five years ago. This was announced by the messenger's founder, Pavel Durov.
In March 2021, the company issued five-year convertible dollar bonds with a 7% annual interest rate, totaling $1 billion. The bonds allowed investors to convert them into Telegram shares at a 10% discount to the nominal price in the event of an IPO.
According to media reports, the messenger's operator planned to go public by the end of 2023. However, closer to the deadline, information emerged about postponing the IPO by another 18-24 months.
In May 2021, Telegram issued additional bonds worth $750 million under the same terms.
Durov stated that the monetization strategy adopted five years ago will allow the messenger to become profitable as early as 2024.
“As a result, our new bond issue last year was oversubscribed,” he added.
Telegram has previously conducted debt placements, with a quarter of one tranche worth $270 million purchased by Durov himself.
In August 2024, the entrepreneur was detained in France. Among the allegations from authorities was providing "cryptographic services for privacy functions without proper declaration, as well as cryptographic tools not intended solely for authentication or message integrity verification". One of the charges included failure to provide information to competent authorities.
Durov was placed under judicial supervision with a €5 million bail. The first substantive interrogations took place four months later, but the case has not yet been submitted to court.
Shortly after his detention, Durov announced enhanced moderation for the messenger. At that time, the platform began to respond promptly to legal requests from European authorities.
Statistics on legal requests for user data from various countries were made public.
It is worth noting that in Russia, Durov's actions are under investigation as part of a criminal case concerning assistance to terrorist activities.