The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
US-listed Chinese luxury e-commerce platform, Secoo, has received an offer from its founder, chairman and chief executive, Li Rixue, to take the company private, according to a report in ChinaIPO.com.
The platform, which counts international fashion houses such as Prada, Balmain and Roger Vivier among its brand partners and markets itself as an exclusive online home for luxury, first listed on the Nasdaq in 2017 and has seen its share price fall more than 70 percent since listing.
The preliminary proposal would see Li Rixue and his affiliates acquire all the issued and not-held Class A common shares with a cash offer of $3.27 per American Depositary Share. As of the close of market on January 11, Secoo’s stock price was $2.96, giving it a total market value of $209 million.
In spite of a boom in e-commerce and luxury e-commerce sales in China last year, Secoo has not been able to capitalise on the increase in sales in the same way as some major competitors, including Alibaba and JD.com, have. In the third quarter of 2020, the company’s revenue and net profit both declined. The company’s third-quarter revenue was 1.37 billion yuan ($212 million), a year-on-year decrease of 29 percent; net profit was 20.77 million yuan ($3.2 million), a year-on-year decrease of 66.5 percent.
Over the same period, Secoo’s total orders increased 7.1 percent and the number of active users increased 7.5 percent, resulting in Gross Merchandising Volume (GMV) reaching 4.12 billion yuan ($637.8 million), a year-on-year increase of 12.5 percent.
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