Moonpig will announce details of an IPO this week, according to reports in the financial pages at the weekend following a story on Sky News. The company itself has declined to comment.
The float could put a £1 billion valuation on the online cards and gifts business. Private equity owner Exponent is taking advantage of booming sales during the lockdown period, which has helped all online businesses. Its impact on greetings cards has been reported by Print Business with Funky Pigeon, Thortful and a host of others enjoying a boost to sales while high street retailers were forced to shut.
Moonpig is saying nothing in public about its plans, but reports indicate that JP Morgan and Citi are leading the effort to take the company public. To the end of April 2019, the company reported revenue of £100 million with a pretax profit of £18.4 million. In the year to April 2020, revenues increased to £173 million and Ebitda profits increased to £44 million.
It has increased its active customer base by 1 million during 2020 and sold more than 45 million cards to 12 million customers in the UK and Netherlands. Its cards are printed and shipped from Guernsey.
Moonpig has expanded into gifts as well as greetings cards and into Benelux and the US, though the UK remains its largest market. Gifts, including flowers, account for half of revenues, rising fast since being introduced ten years ago.
The initial lockdown put pressure on production as Guernsey applied strict restrictions to the number of personnel in any factory at any one time. Online car retailers had to balance demand against capacity during that surge.
Demand for photo merchandise has increased across the board during the pandemic. Consultancy Futuresource reported in the summer that 2020 volumes would be 10% higher than 2019, this coming before a second round of lockdowns and the peak season at the end of the year.
