Will Birkenstock also run on the stock market?
In the last year alone it has declared revenues of over 1.24 billion and now Birkenstock Holding, the company at the head of the German sandal manufacturer of the same name, has presented an initial public offering (IPO) to the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). All the details
Either you love them or hate them. But in the end even Barbie, in her perfection, chooses to wear them and it is – perhaps – also thanks to her that Birkenstock Holding, the company at the head of the German sandal manufacturer of the same name, has presented an initial public offering (IPO) to Securities and American Exchange Commission (SEC). In the last year alone the brand declared revenues of over 1.24 billion.
THE (SECRET) BIRKENSTOCK IPO
Birkenstock Holding presented an initial public offering in the United States yesterday, planning to list its shares under the ticker “BIRK” on the New York Stock Exchange, “underscoring – writes Reuters – the recovery of the country's stock markets and becoming the second largest European company [the other is the British technology company Arm, ed. ] to try to list abroad this month”.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, the news agency reports, are the main underwriters of the IPO and entities affiliated with L Catterton – majority owner of Birkenstock and a private equity firm backed by LVMH – will control the majority of the power combined voting rights of the shares after the offering.
No details have, however, been released about the IPO but sources cited by the Financial Times say the offering could value the sandal maker at more than $8 billion.
BIRKENSTOCK NUMBERS AND THE "THAWING" OF THE US MARKETS
While no further information about the offer was revealed, the company said net sales for the six months ended March 31 rose 19% to 644.17 million euros and profit fell 45.3 % at 40.21 million euros.
Birkenstock's ambitions, according to Reuters , come on the heels of filings by Arm, marketing automation and consumer data platform Klaviyo and grocery delivery app Instacart, “as U.S. stock markets thaw after that the uncertain economic outlook has led to a slow start to the year.”
Craig Erlam, market analyst at Oanda, also told CNN that “it is safe to say that the US is leading the [IPO] resurgence at this stage and that other financial centres, particularly London, have a lot to do to compete better in the future."
DANGER COUNTER-COATED PRODUCTS
However, the most famous sandals in the world, with a 249-year history, are in danger. As stated in the risk factors section of its prospectus, Birkenstock has warned that it faces competition from "imitations," CNBC reports. The company has long struggled to protect its intellectual property as the brand's popularity and high prices have often been challenged by cheaper alternatives sold on third-party e-commerce platforms, threatening the brand's reputation. agency.
Birkenstock, although it never names Amazon in its 206 pages of documentation, abandoned Jeff Bezos' giant seven years ago due to a boom in counterfeit and unauthorized sales on the site and now says it has "abstained, and may refrain in the future , from using some third-party websites to distribute their products due to the sale of counterfeit products on such platforms.”
FROM UGLY DUCKLING TO MUST HAVE
Although the company had existed since 1774, Birkenstock sandals didn't land in the United States until the 1960s, when German-American designer Margot Fraser began importing them to San Francisco, where shoe stores initially refused to sell them (because they were ugly ). But she managed to make them successful by placing them in the health food stores where the hippies shopped.
They have come a long way since then. Today the German-born company is based in London and its shoes once considered for tasteless Germans have been imitated and brought to the catwalks by brands such as Valentino, Hermès, Chanel, Prada. Last year alone, Birkenstock sales increased by 29% and since the Barbie movie hit theaters searches for the Arizona model Birkenstocks increased by +110%.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/birkenstock-correra-anche-in-borsa/ on Wed, 13 Sep 2023 14:42:37 +0000.