Thursday, June 15, 2006.
The German World Cup group stage is still going on. In yesterday's match, the defending champion Brazil defeated Croatia 1:0; France and Switzerland were scoreless for 90 minutes and finally shook hands and made peace; Spain beat Ukraine 4:0...
Then today is the day for Argos Retail Group to be listed on the London Stock Exchange and traded on its main board.
In this IPO, Argos Retail Group will publicly sell 300 million new shares, accounting for 9.1% of the total share capital after listing. Based on the issue price of 3 pounds per share, Argos Retail Group will be able to raise 900 million pounds. These funds will be used to continue to consolidate the European market, improve warehousing and logistics, and research and develop new technologies.
At 8 a.m. London time, after the call auction ended, Argos shares opened directly at 4.15 pounds. After the opening, the stock price continued to rise until it reached the highest price of the day at 4.95 pounds. When it was close to 5 pounds, it slowly fell back...
Argos shares eventually closed at £4.68, up 56% from the issue price of £3.
Based on this price, the market value of Argos Retail Group reached 15.444 billion pounds. Based on the current exchange rate of 1.85 pounds to the US dollar, the market value of Argos Retail Group exceeded 28.5 billion US dollars, which is nearly three times the valuation of 10 billion US dollars when the Global Industrial Investment Fund invested in it.
After the listing, the total share capital of Argos Retail Group was 3.3 billion shares, of which DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund) held 2.025 billion shares, accounting for 61.36%; Rich23 Capital held 675 million shares, accounting for 20.45%; Global Industrial Investment Fund (GII-2 Holdings) held 300 million shares, accounting for 9.1%.
The reason why Argos Retail Group's share price has been able to rise so much after its listing is mainly due to the bonus given by Argos.com's e-commerce business. In addition, they own more than 1,000 physical stores, plus the sales bonus from e-commerce, which makes the market value of Argos Retail Group very imaginative.
It is worth mentioning that the market value of Argos Retail Group at this time has exceeded that of Amazon. In fact, in 2004, the market value of Amazon exceeded 30 billion US dollars. However, this year Bezos intends to develop a cloud business that seems to have nothing to do with e-commerce, that is, the AWS business. This makes the outside world not optimistic about Amazon, so its stock price has been under pressure.
However, Barron knew that cloud business would be a phenomenal business and would be very important for e-commerce. It was the "infrastructure" for e-commerce to develop to a certain stage - just like Alibaba continued to invest and developed Alibaba Cloud.
However, if we start this business now, it will require a long period of continuous cultivation and will certainly be easily rejected by the outside world.
Now, after receiving $1 billion in funding from the GII Fund last time, Argos Retail Group has started its expansion across Europe, with a focus on Western Europe and Northern Europe. After this IPO, it has raised another 900 million pounds, and they will continue to improve the quality and scope of their services.
And they will also make big moves...
In the second week after its listing, Argos Retail Group announced that it was preparing to acquire British Logistics, the largest logistics company in the UK except for the Royal Mail, for 4 billion pounds.
This acquisition will help Argos Retail Group to more closely integrate its e-commerce business with British Logistics' logistics and delivery, thereby providing users with better quality and more content-rich services.
They announced that they had reached an agreement with the board of directors of British Logistics. This acquisition worth 4 billion pounds will be carried out in the form of a stock swap. Argos Group will issue 800 million shares to the holders of British Logistics shares, Caesars Fund and DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund), at a price of 5 pounds per share to complete the full acquisition of British Logistics.
In this way, Caesar Fund, which originally held 95% of the shares of British Logistics, will obtain 760 million shares of Argos; DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund), which once merged "Speedway" Logistics into British Logistics and obtained 5% of its shares, will now be able to obtain 40 million shares of Argos.
After the merger, the total share capital of Argos Retail Group will increase to 4.1 billion shares. Together with the 40 million Argos shares acquired after the merger with British Transport Logistics, DS Holdings will hold a total of 2.065 billion Argos shares, accounting for 50.37%. Caesars Fund will hold 18.5% of the shares of Argos Retail Group.
British Express Logistics will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Argos Retail Group. In addition to continuing its original business, it will also improve the delivery speed of express delivery for Argos.com users.
It is worth mentioning that when Caesars Fund acquired British Logistics, it acquired this British logistics giant for approximately 2.5 billion pounds.
However, after New Year's Day this year, the entire British postal industry landscape has undergone tremendous changes - the British postal regulator will begin to implement new rules, allowing postal companies to compete openly and "share" the British postal service market cake.
Prior to this, British Express Logistics had obtained one of the 13 long-term operating licenses issued by the British postal regulator. With their scale and after the merger with Speedy Logistics, they grabbed the biggest piece of the pie taken away by the Royal Mail.
In addition, through the cooperation with Argos.com in recent times, British Logistics has been actively expanding its business in many European countries, so it is normal that the "selling price" can now rise to 4 billion pounds.
After all, in the original time and space, when Deutsche Post acquired BT Logistics in September 2005, the price had reached 3.5 billion pounds.
…
The room became quiet again.
Bonnie's face was still a little flushed. She leaned her head on Barron's solid shoulder and traced the lines of his muscles with her fingers.
"Oh, dear, Dasha called me a few days ago. She is also in Germany watching the World Cup, but I still need to deal with company matters during that time..."
Hearing Bonnie's words, Barron kissed her on the forehead and said with a smile:
"Let's go to Germany together in a few days, so you can come along too."
The Dasha that Bonnie mentioned is Abu's current wife, Dasha Zhukova. Bonnie often goes shopping with her.
As the owner of Chelsea, Barron was not surprised at all that Abramovich and his team would go to the World Cup.
It's just that he didn't meet the other person when he was in Germany before - of course, he was with Fan Bingbing at the time, and Dasha and Bonnie were best friends, so Barron didn't take the initiative to contact Abu.
However, before that, in addition to the listing of Argos Retail Group and the merger with British Transport Logistics, Barron also needs to attend an important ceremony before he can leave London.
After Argos Retail Group merged with British Logistics, Argos's share price rose again. Ten days after its listing, Argos' share price had reached 5 pounds. At this time, the market value of Argos Retail Group had exceeded 20 billion pounds!