Clipper Logistics plans London float as it eyes European growth
LOGISTICS firm Clipper yesterday unveiled its plans to float on the London Stock Exchange, as it looks to accelerate its European expansion drive and take advantage of the growing online retail market.
The company provides tailor-made logistics solutions for pure-play online retailers such as Asos and traditional high street retailers adopting multichannel strategies such as Asda and Morrisons.
It hopes to list on the premium segment of the main market by the end of the month, selling around half of the company to institutional investors. The initial public offering, which is expected to value the company at around £130m, will not raise any fresh capital, but enable the shareholders to sell down their stakes. It is expected that founder and chairman Steve Parkin will remain the group’s largest shareholder following completion of the offer.
“By leveraging the strength of our customer proposition and focus on customer service and innovative new products, we have been able to deliver organic growth and an IPO is the next logical step to support our ambitious growth plans,” said Parkin.
Online sales have grown sharply in recent years and are expected to hit £125bn in the UK by 2022.
Clipper’s adjusted core earnings rose by 10.3 per cent in the last financial year to £9.6m.
BEHIND THE DEAL
NUMIS SECURITIES | STUART SKINNER
1 Skinner joined Numis in 2003 after starting off his career by training as a corporate lawyer with Travers Smith.
2 He helps lead the support services team at Numis and recently acted on the £48m flotation of Keywords Studios and APR Energy’s $314m acquisition of GE’s turbine rental business.
3 Skinner has managed over 40 initial public offerings and secondary equity issues across a variety of sectors, as well as public and private M&A experience for listed clients.
Also advising…
Numis are acting as adviser, bookrunner and sponsor on the float. Other key members of the team are Kevin Cruickshank, who recently worked on the £490m IPO of Polypipe Group and Mark Lander, who was head of corporate broking at Panmure Gordon before joining Numis and is a multiple Ironman finisher.