THG shareholders have voted in favour of its plan to spin off its loss-making Ingenuity ecommerce platform into a separate company.
Around 89% of investors backed the LookFantastic and MyProtein owner’s divestment of its technology arm at a valuation of £90m on Friday.
Ingenuity, which employs about 3,500 people, provides technology to support the online operations for retailers including the likes of The Range and Holland & Barrett. It also has 13 warehouses across the UK.
THG launched a funding round to raise £95.4m and has secured a debt funding of £55m, which it said will be used to fund Ingenuity until its operations are no longer lossmaking.
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THG said in November: “The demerger simplifies THG’s business model as a free cash-flow generative consumer, beauty and nutrition group, with an improved balance sheet, capital expenditure and cash-flow profile.
“The board believes that there is a significant opportunity to create value for shareholders by demerging Ingenuity into a separate private company with no public listing or other trading facility for the Ingenuity shares.”
The technology division narrowed its losses from £227.6m to £140.9m in the year to 30 June, despite sales slipping 5% to £671.4m.
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