An online beauty products retailer has been snapped up by Manchester-headquartered e-commerce giant The Hut Group (THG) for £275m.
Cult Beauty, which was founded in London in 2008, will bring about 200 new brands to THG's portfolio, 1.7million "engaged customers" and 1.6million Instagram followers.
The deal will also lead to an increase of about £140m in sales for the listed group and in the region of £10m in adjusted EBITDA for THG during its next financial year, reports BusinessLive.
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Cult Beauty is also expected to contribute sales of about £60m and adjusted EBITDA of c.£3m for the remainder of THG's current year.
The business is the authorised online retailer of c.300 third party brands across skincare, haircare and cosmetics, including Charlotte Tilbury, Drunk Elephant and Huda Beauty.
In a statement issued to the London Stock Exchange, THG said Cult Beauty is to "retain a very clear identity" due to its "distinguished brand portfolio".
THG is acquiring Cult Beauty from private shareholders including majority investor Mark Quinn-Newall, the co-founder of Net-a-Porter, and co-CEO Alexia Inge.
THG's executive chairman and CEO Matthew Moulding said: "Cult Beauty is frequently the partner of choice for emerging indie brands due to its personalised, content-led approach and enthusiastic consumer base who are continually seeking new, innovative solutions to complement their beauty routines.
"Cult Beauty's first-to-market reputation makes the brand an exciting fit for our THG Beauty division.
"When retailing brands to consumers THG Beauty will run with two unique fascias within our main continents: THG will principally service customers within North America via our Dermstore and Lookfantastic brands, while in the UK, Europe, Asia and the Rest of the World the key brands will be Lookfantastic and Cult Beauty.
"We anticipate fully migrating Cult Beauty onto the THG Ingenuity platform by the end of the year (within the first six months of acquisition), giving the brand access to the global digital features to underpin significant future growth.
"Further to the announcement made on 2 nd February 2021, we are also pleased to confirm the Dermstore integration strategy remains on plan with the migration to Ingenuity already completed ahead of schedule."
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THG has also announced both a tighter and increased range of +38% to +41% revenue growth for its current financial year on a constant currency basis, upgraded from Q1 2021 guidance of +30% to +35%.
Taking into account foreign exchange movements since prior guidance, the group now expects to deliver reported revenue growth of +35% to +38% for FY 2021.
