A new fundraising could come in before Back Market enters the stock market and becomes public. The market is gloomy. Venture capitalists are much less motivated in the face of central bank rate hikes. But Back Market claims three-digit growth every year since its launch in 2014, enough to give confidence. Its pace of financing operation has been frantic since 2020.
We remember the $110 million ticket with Goldman Sachs, but also the 276 million euros in May 2021 which allowed it to exceed a billion dollars in valuation. Since then, 450 million dollars have been injected again at the start of the year, to fuel the progression of the unicorn to more than 5.7 billion dollars in valuation.
With its 650 employees, the company has begun to expand internationally with offices in New York and Berlin. Its platform is available in the United States (since the beginning of the year), Japan, Great Britain and Germany, in addition to France. Another very strong indicator point for a company at the stage of going public. Many are waiting to achieve international exposure before seeking to enter the stock market.
A comparison with the used car market
What appeals to Back Market investors and executives most is the market’s growth prospects. Currently, only 10% of sales of electronic products come from reconditioning. Gold, “on the automotive market, 70% of vehicles are sold second-hand”said Thibaud Hug de Larauze, CEO and co-founder of Back Market, in an exchange with Les Echos last January.
For the time being, the Back Market teams did not want to respond to the Bloomberg article. A spokesperson simply indicated that an IPO is not one of the “most important priorities in the near future”. Bloomberg reported that of all of the IPOs in Europe last year, their share prices have fallen by an average of 42% to date.
On the stock market as with private investors, the difficulties are there. Many companies preferred to delay their IPO and others, like Deezer in France, which lost more than 50% of its value.