// Seraphine has agreed to be taken private by its major shareholder Mayfair Equity Partners
// The deal is a 90% discount of the maternity retailer’s initial public offering price from 18 months ago
Seraphine is to be taken private by its largest shareholder in a deal, which will see its value drop to 10% of its IPO price.
The maternity retailer has agreed to a 30p-a-share offer, equating to £15.3m, with Mayfair Equity Partners for the remaining shares that it does not own.
If the deal goes through, it would be a discount of 90% to the IPO price of 295p from 18 months ago.
The online maternity retailer has been struggling with plummeting sales in “a highly challenging environment”.
In its most recent financial update, it reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of £1.5m for the 26 weeks to the 2 October, compared to a £3m profit in 2021.
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The retailer said the deal will remove the substantial costs associated with being listed, allowing the company to focus on “returning to profitable growth”.
Seraphine chair Sharon Flood said: “Seraphine has faced an extraordinary convergence of challenges since listing in 2021 including the global supply chain crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and substantial inflation in online marketing costs.
“Whilst the whole retail sector has been affected by these issues, Seraphine, a relatively smaller company new to the London Stock Exchange with a large reliance on ecommerce, has, we believe, been disproportionately challenged.”
“Despite the huge efforts of our people and management, who have managed to improve gross product margin, achieve higher basket sizes and expand into several new markets, the business continues to operate in a very uncertain and challenging market.
The retailer’s independent directors said the deal represented “a premium of approximately 200%” of its current share price, which has dropped to £4.8m as shares plummeted 95% over the last 12 months.
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