Online fashion giant Boohoo has raised almost £200m in a huge fundraising round as part of the firm's plans for expansion.
The deal was led by investment banking boutique Zeus Capital, and the Manchester -based company will now look at opportunities including mergers and acquisition activity.
The £197.7m in shares are expected to be admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market at 8am on May 20, with the new placing representing five per cent of the enlarged share capital.
Since completing a £300m IPO in 2014, again led by Zeus Capital, Boohoo, founded in 2006, has grown rapidly in the UK and internationally, with a current market capitalisation in excess of £4.1bn.
It comes weeks after Boohoo announced revenues had soared over £1bn - up almost 50% on the year before.
The Manchester -based firm's CEO John Lyttle hailed a "great year" despite the coronavirus outbreak after revenues reached £1.23bn to the year ending February 29 - up 44% from £856m on the year before.
The firm now intends to use the proceeds of the placing to take advantage of potential M&A opportunities that are likely to emerge in the global fashion industry over the coming months.
The placing will also support Boohoo’s balance sheet to help it to accelerate its vision to lead the fashion ecommerce market globally.
A team at Zeus Capital, comprising CEO John Goold, directors of corporate finance Nick Cowles and Andrew Jones and director of equity capital markets Benjamin Robertson, acted as joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner on the transaction.
In recent years, the firm has extended its customer offerings through a number of acquisitions.
This includes building on its female audiences with the purchases of PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal in 2017, and MissPap, Karen Millen and Coast last year, and expanded into menswear with the launch of its boohooMAN brand in 2013. As at February 2020, the group had just under 14m active customers across all its brands around the world.
