Made.com sitting pretty with £775m price tag in London IPO
The online homewares and furniture group has priced its initial public offering at 200p a share.
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Your support makes all the difference.Online furniture seller Made.com will kick off its stock market debut on Wednesday with a £775.3 million price tag, the group has confirmed.
Made.com – co-founded by Lastminute.com entrepreneur Brent Hoberman – priced its initial public offering (IPO) at 200p a share for when conditional dealing starts.
The firm, which unveiled the float plans last month, will raise £100 million of new money through the IPO, with a further £93.8 million worth of shares being sold by existing investors.
Unconditional dealing in the group will begin on June 21, it said.
It is aiming to invest the cash raised towards growing further across Europe and boosting its homewares range.
A listing in London, where the business was founded, will enable us to accelerate our growth as we lead the development of the online furniture and homewares market as it moves online
Philippe Chainieux, chief executive of Made.com, said the IPO is an “exciting milestone for Made”.
He added: “A listing in London where the business was founded, will enable us to accelerate our growth as we lead the development of the online furniture and homewares market as it moves online, both in the UK and internationally.”
Its IPO comes amid a boom in demand for home furnishings during the pandemic, as well as a shift towards online retail.
The float is also the latest in a long line of similar recent IPOs, following the likes of online greetings card firm Moonpig online wine seller Virgin Wines and “recommerce” site MusicMagpie.
Made.com said gross sales jumped 30% higher to £315 million in 2020, with growth accelerating further in the first quarter of 2021 to 63% year on year.
It is aiming to have net sales of more than £1.2 billion by 2025.
High street rival DFS has also been enjoying impressive trading, with orders nearly doubling in the past 10 weeks compared with 2019 since shops reopened.
DFS also saw online orders nearly triple in its third quarter when stores remained shut in a sign that consumers are now more willing to buy so-called big ticket items, such as sofas, over the internet.
Made.com was founded in the UK in 2010 by Mr Hoberman and Ning Li and, since 2013, has expanded across Europe, with Spain the most recent new market it entered, in 2018.
Around 52% of gross sales came from the UK market in the first three months of 2021, with the remainder from Continental Europe.
The group has two showrooms in the UK and a handful across Europe, but does not plan to increase its bricks and mortar sites as it remains focused on being an online player.
But it is expanding its warehouse space in the London Gateway development in the South East, with plans to hire up to another 100 staff, to help support its growth.
Mr Li – who was chief executive of the firm until the end of 2016 – is a non-executive of Made.com, though Mr Hoberman no longer has an active role in the firm.