Ocado sets £1.2bn valuation for listing
ONLINE grocer Ocado is aiming for a valuation of over £1bn in its planned initial public offering (IPO), despite turbulent markets and scepticism among some analysts and investors.
The firm, which announced plans last month to raise £200m in a stock market listing, said on it would price its shares at between 200 pence and 275 pence.
That would give the business, which delivers the products of Waitrose , a market value of £1.18bn, including the fundraising.
Founded in 2000 by three former Goldman Sachs bankers, Ocado is enjoying soaring sales but has yet to make a pretax profit, sparking scepticism among some analysts and investors about whether its IPO will attract demand in jittery markets.
Britain’s benchmark FTSE-100 index .FTSE has fallen around 5 percent since Ocado announced its plans to float on June 24.
Ocado has said it will use money raised from the flotation to build a second depot for fulfilling customer orders.
It added that exsiting shareholders and optionholders would sell up to 155.2m shares. These include the pension fund of the John Lewis Partnership, which is Waitrose’s parent company and owns a stake of about 28 per cent.