By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
Poundland has picked banks to lead a flotation that could underline the stellar growth in the discount retail sector by valuing it at as much as £900m.
Sky News has learnt that Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm which controls Poundland, has picked Credit Suisse and JP Morgan to oversee a listing in the coming months. The appointments are expected to be confirmed in the next few days.
The flotation of Poundland will lay the foundations for an ambitious expansion of the chain, which currently operates 450 shops and has set a target of more than doubling that estate to 1,000 "over time".
Last year, the company reported a 15% rise in total sales to £880m, and a 15.6% increase in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to £45.4m.
Bankers say Poundland could be valued at up to 20 times that profits figure, meaning it would be worth in the region of £900m. Such a valuation would effectively put the company beyond the reach of rival private equity firms such as CVC Capital, which have been mulling potential bids for Poundland.
The chain has grown rapidly as consumers have sought to economise, and says it sells more than 1,000 branded products at the same price-point. These include, it says, 6 million Toblerone chocolate bars a year, 5 million bags of sugar and 500,000 garden gnomes.
Mr McCarthy, who stands to make a massive windfall from the flotation, said when reporting the group's full-year results last month that it had been "a year of tremendous progress".
"In the UK, Poundland is powering ahead. Our single price point and our amazing value are appealing to an increasingly broad section of UK shoppers," he said.
"We opened a net 51 new stores in the year and that rate of growth has continued into the current year. I'm confident that over time Poundland will have over 1,000 stores across the UK."
Poundland is chaired by Andrew Higginson, who was a senior executive at Tesco during Sir Terry Leahy's stint at the helm. Also a non-executive director of BSkyB, the owner of Sky News, Mr Higginson recently led an unsuccessful bid to acquire 315 branches from Royal Bank of Scotland.
Sir Terry now chairs B&M Retail, another leading discount retailer backed by private equity funding, which is also drawing up plans to list on the stock market next year. It could be worth well over £1bn when it does so.
Rothschild, the investment bank, has been advising Poundland on its options, while Credit Suisse and JP Morgan will act as bookrunners responsible for placing the shares that are sold.
Warburg Pincus and Poundland both declined to comment.
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