Ecommerce group THG will appoint a non-executive chair as part of its efforts to improve transparency and move its listing to the premium rather than standard segment of the London Stock Exchange.
Co-founder and chief executive Matt Moulding has been acting as executive chair of the company, which floated last year. That is permitted under listing rules but goes against best practice guidelines. Executive search group Russell Reynolds has been engaged to help find a candidate.
THG also said Andreas Hansson, a managing director at SoftBank, would join the board. SoftBank owns about 8 per cent of THG and has an option to buy a 20 per cent stake in its Ingenuity technology division.
Shares in the Manchester-based group have been under pressure, more than halving over the past two months as investors have struggled to reconcile the £4.5bn valuation implied for Ingenuity by the SoftBank deal with its small annual revenues and unknown profitability.
A recent capital markets day provided no material new insights and accelerated the fall in the share price, prompting speculation that SoftBank may not exercise the option. THG has said it expects it will be exercised in the first half of next year.
THG said on Tuesday that third-quarter revenue was up 38 per cent at £508m, with almost half of that coming from the beauty business and a further £159m from nutrition.
Ingenuity, which provides ecommerce technology to other consumer groups, reported revenue growth of 44 per cent to £51m and is now expected to generate “annual run rate” revenue of £108m to £122m over the full year, 20 to 25 per cent above last year.
The group published additional information about Ingenuity’s revenue mix, saying that about three-fifths of its revenue is recurring and that its order book includes contracts to operate more than 450 websites for 140 clients.
It added that the division’s sales could reach an annual rate of £270m by the end of 2023, although that figure also incorporates revenues from the group’s beauty and nutrition units.
Ingenuity’s total revenue so far this year is £137m. Of that, £107m came from providing individual services such as website hosting or translation and £30m from the more lucrative end-to-end ecommerce service.
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