Just-Eat dials up bid to debut on growth market
FAST food site Just-Eat is sharpening plans to list on the new high-growth segment (HGS) of London’s main stock market, making it the first company to join the fledgling platform if it pulls the trigger on the plans.
The company’s backers are understood to be examining a proposal to offload just 10 per cent of the company to investors in an initial public offering, instead of the usual 25 per cent free float required for a main market listing.
Although no decision has been taken, a Just-Eat listing on the HGS would be a major coup for the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which was launched to much fanfare in February last year but has so far failed to attract a single firm to list.
Just-Eat, which is majority-owned by Vitruvian Partners and Index Ventures, is working with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan on the plans, and could launch the float as early as April. Vitruvian Partners, Index Ventures and Just-Eat all declined to comment last night.
An initial offering of shares could value the firm at between £700m and £900m, which would give it an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation multiple of between 70 and 90 times – far above its peers in the sector.
Just-Eat, which was founded in Denmark in 2001 and operates in 13 countries around the world, appointed chief executive David Buttress last May. The company is chaired by John Hughes, a former executive of Thales Group.
The LSE rolled out the HGS to help London lure fast growing tech companies destined for a New York listing. Last week, Candy Crush Saga maker King Entertainment dealt a blow to London by opting to list on the NYSE instead of the HGS.
ADVISERS
VISWAS RAGHAVAN
JP MORGAN
Just-Eat is working with banking advisers from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan on its plans to list, a sign of US banks’ increasing prominence on equity capital market transactions in the UK and Europe.
JP Morgan, in particular, has been busy gearing up for a frantic year of capital markets action, being chosen to work on floats ranging from Poundland to Appliances Online. rankings.
The bank’s head of investment banking in Europe, the middle east and Africa is Viswas Raghavan, who works out of the firm’s Canary Wharf offices. He oversees a department housing hundreds of staff and bankers across the regions, who are responsible for corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and transaction banking.
Raghavan was formerly global head of equity capital markets at JP Morgan and joined the bank from Lehman Brothers in 2000.
The 46-year old graduated from the University of Bombay, India with a BSc in Physics and then moved to Birmingham, England, to take a postgraduate degree in electronic engineering and computer science from Aston University.