HUT GROUP SHARES SOAR AFTER BIGGEST UK MARKET DEBUT IN FIVE YEARS
THE HUT GROUP, THE ONLINE RETAILER AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
HG Holdings floated at 500p-per-share, and has seen an immediate spike as investors have bought into one of Britain's biggest homegrown tech 'unicorns'.On Tuesday, its shares closed at 603.9p, giving it a market capitalization of £5.83bn.
Founded in 2004 by Matthew Moulding, who continues to run the company, THG operates 200+ localised websites, and sells goods in 169 countries, according to a spokesman.
Shares in health, beauty and nutrition retailer The Hut Group soared nearly a third on their debut in London on Wednesday, providing a boost to a market struggling for new listings during the pandemic and in the run-up to Brexit. The Manchester-based online retailer used its initial public offering to raise £920m for the company and an additional £961m for existing shareholders. Shares jumped 20 per cent at the open and reached a high of 658p, up 32 per cent from the IPO price of 500p, before easing back to a 27 per cent gain. The stock price gave the company an opening valuation of around £5.83bn and marked London’s largest IPO since Allied Irish Banks in 2017, and the largest by amount raised since Worldpay, a payments processor, in 2015. Across Europe, only coffee group JDE Peet’s has raised more on its debut this year. Phil Drury at Citigroup, the joint co-ordinator of the offer, said the deal had received “multiple levels of oversubscription” and that investors had not been put off by Hut Group’s unusual corporate governance arrangements.