Fast-growing pureplay e-tailer Boozt plans IPO

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 8, 2017

The businesses that are turning into stock market darlings are increasingly those running pureplay e-tail operations and the latest one to hope it will be a stock exchange star is Sweden’s Boozt. The fashion e-tailer, which saw turnover of SEK1.4bn (£122m) last year, will launch an IPO on the Stockholm stock exchange, it has just announced.

The listing is expected to happen before the end of Q2 with an offering of new and existing shares to institutional investors (excluding those in the US), as well as to the public in its native Sweden and in Denmark.

The company, which is currently majority owned by Verdane Capital and Sunstone Capital along with Sampension and Friheden Invest, is growing fast. As well as those sales of SEK 1.4bn, it made profits of SEK29.5m last year. And it is targeting revenue growth of between 25% and 30% in the medium term.

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It sells a huge range of women, men’s and kidswear at prices from affordable up to premium priced. The thousands of brands available on the site include Polo Ralph Lauren, Ecco Desigual, Calvin Klein, Tiger of Sweden, Zoe Karssen, Day Birger & Mikkelsen, Filippa K, French Connection and Gant.

Describing the IPO as “an important milestone”, Boozt said it will cement its long-term ownership structure as it continues its aim of becoming the leading online player in the clothing market in the Nordic region.

Online retailers have seen major success on stock markets with many of them seeing their share prices far exceeding the average price-to-earnings multiple of around 15. In the e-tail world a multiple of 20, 40 and even 60 is not unusual. And those share prices stayed buoyant in 2016 and 2017 even against challenging times for other high street retailers. Shares in Zalando, Asos and Boohoo are aloo trading significantly higher than their IPO prices.