LastMinute float for March

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated:

 

Online retailer lastminute.com is to float on both the London Stock Exchange and New york's Nasdaq next month in an offer-for-sale that is expected to value the company at well over £400 million.

Demand for the shares is expected to be enormous, given that lastminute is the second-best-known e-commerce business in Britain, beaten only by Amazon.co.uk, which has been established for much longer.

The shares will be sold both to institutions around the world and to British retail investors with access to the offer through the internet to lastminute's 800,000 existing subscribers and anyone else who signs up in the meantime.

The offer is being lead managed by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter with the global offering being handled by Cazenove, Deutsche Bank, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette and Warburg Dillon Read. Roadshows are planned for Britain, Europe and the United States. The flotation will make paper millionaires of lastminute's founders Brent Hoberman, 31, and Martha Lane Fox, 27. At a valuation of £400 million, their stakes would be worth £48 million and £32 million respectively.

Lastminute is one of the most rapidly growing internet businesses in Britain. It went online in October 1998 and sells everything from discounted flights to chocolates. It added 200,000 registered subscribers in January alone and said the rate is growing at 30% compound each month.

In the year to last September, it handled transactions worth £2.6 million but its actual turnover based solely on commissions received was just £195,000.

Before flotation, lastminute is 20.9% owned by its directors and staff, 19.4% by Arts Alliance Advisors and 10.6% by US venture capitalists Global Retail Partners.

However, its list of smaller strategic investors also includes France Télcom, Deutsche Telekom, BAA, Bass Hotels and Sony Music. None of the existing shareholders is selling in the float.

The group has supplier relationships with, among others, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, English National Ballet and Conran Restaurants.

It has already expanded into France, Germany and Sweden and plans to use the money raised at flotation to grow further in Europe and then into the US and Asia.

Hoberman said: 'We want to be the global marketplace for all last-minute services and transactions. We will be using the money we raise for expansion but also very much for reinforcing the brand. which is very important for this kind of business. There are also huge technological opportunities ahead.'

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