This month, Matthew Moulding, founder, chief executive and chairman of The Hut Group (THG), will sound the bell at the London Stock Exchange to mark the bourse's first grand listing since the outbreak of Covid-19. The consumer brands company plans to list at least a fifth of its shares in an IPO that will value it at £4.5bn.
THG is not a pure retail play; its e-commerce platform, Ingenuity, helps partners build their own digital operations, and sits at the heart of the THG proposition. Whether to view the group as a tech outfit is up for debate, but doing so adds a British name to a recent volley of American and Chinese tech listings - juxtaposing it with other founder-led 'Unicorns' (privately-held start-ups valued at over $1bn) like Airbnb. Such a sectoral classification would also go some way towards justifying THG’s blockbuster valuation.
THG will debut during a time of unprecedented disruption for the London market, and the markets in which it operates. While IPO activity has slumped in recent years, consumer goods are undergoing a makeover, with e-commerce finally edging towards profitability.