Australia’s largest online retailer Booktopia is launching early investor education meetings this week for an initial public offering scheduled to occur in December.
Working on the float is Shaw and Partners and Morgans.
It comes after the company experienced a 28 per cent lift in its new book sales during the 2020 financial year, with total sales topping $165m for the first time.
Booktopia has a customer database of 4.5 million, with 1.4 million active customers.
The company has been operating for 16 years and is the country’s largest vertically integrated Australian-owned book retailer.
It sold more than 6.4 million books in the 2020 financial year.
The company is founded and run by Tony Nash and has already raised $20m in capital as part of its expansion plans.
It made efforts to list in 2016, seeking to raise $40m to float with a $100m market value, but those plans were later shelved.
The pricing equated to 0.8 times forecast sales on an enterprise value basis.
At that time, the company was forecasting $104.5m in revenue for financial year 2017 and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $2.1m.
In recent years, Booktopia has acquired some of Australia’s leading book retailers including University Co-operative Bookshops in 2020 and major rival Angus & Robertson in 2015.
The group also distributes books to 700 bookstores, including Dymocks and QBD. In the last 18 months the company has also launched a book publishing business.
Chief executive Tony Nash this month told The Australian that part of Booktopia’s success to the fact that he was prepared to stock books many bookshop owners weren’t.
While an overseas expansion is “definitely on the road map”, Mr Nash said expanding the domestic business remains the priority for now.
“The market is huge. It’s a well over $2bn book market and our revenue for fiscal year 2020 was well over $165m so we’ve got some way to go yet,” he told recently The Australian.
Coal price not right as Kestrel mine owners seek $4.8bn pay dirt
The owners of the Kestrel coal mine will have to convince buyers to pay about $4.8bn for the mine, but the coal price has fallen about 20 per cent since it was first set to hit the market.
St John of God in discussions over Healthscope leases
The not-for-profit St John of God Health Care has discussed with Healthco Healthcare and Wellness REIT taking over some real estate leases from tenant Healthscope.