Chapter 473 Argos goes public

Thursday, June 15, 2006.

The German World Cup group stage is still in full swing. Just yesterday, the defending champion Brazil defeated Croatia 1:0; France and Switzerland did not score for 90 minutes and finally shook hands; Spain won 4:0. Pressure on Ukraine...

Then today, it is time for Argos Retail Group to land on the London Stock Exchange and be listed 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. According to the issue price of 3 pounds per share, Argos Retail Group can raise 900 million pounds, and these funds will be used to continue Stabilize the European market, improve warehousing logistics and develop and apply new technologies.

At 8 a.m. London time, after the call auction ended, Argos shares opened directly at a price of 4.15 pounds. After the opening, the stock price continued to rise, reaching the highest price of the day of 4.95 pounds. When it was close to 5 pounds, it slowly fell back... …

Argos shares closed at £4.68, an increase of 56% from the issue price of £3.

Calculated at this price, the market value of Argos Retail Group reached 15.444 billion pounds. Calculated based on the exchange rate of 1.85 pounds to US dollars at this time, the market value of Argos Retail Group exceeded 28.5 billion US dollars. Compared with the previous time when Global Industrial Investment Fund took shares The valuation of US$10 billion is directly close to three times that.

After 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 675 million shares held by h23 Capital, accounting for 20.45%; Global Industrial Investment Fund (GII-2 Holdings Company) holds 300 million shares, accounting for 9.1%.

The reason why Argos Retail Group's share price has risen so high after listing is mainly due to the bonus given to it by Argos.com's e-commerce business, plus the physical presence of more than 1,000 stores they own, plus the e-commerce The sales volume addition 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, Amazon’s market value exceeded US$30 billion. However, this year Bezos’s intention to develop e-commerce seems to be incompatible. The unrelated cloud business, that is, the AWS business, makes the outside world not optimistic about Amazon, so its stock price has been under pressure.

However, Barron knows that the cloud business will be a phenomenal business, and it is also very important for e-commerce. It is the "infrastructure" for e-commerce to develop to a certain stage - just like Alibaba later continued to invest and develop Alibaba Cloud.

But if we start this business from now on, it will require continuous cultivation for a long time, and it will definitely be easily rejected by the outside world.

Now that Argos Retail Group received US$1 billion in funding from GII Fund last time, it has started to expand throughout Europe, focusing on Western Europe and Northern Europe. After this IPO, it has raised another 900 million pounds, and they will continue to improve. Quality and scope of service.

And they will also make big moves...

In the second week after listing, Argos Retail Group announced that it was preparing to acquire British Express Logistics, the largest logistics company in the UK besides Royal Mail, for 4 billion pounds.

This acquisition will help Argos Retail Group to more closely integrate its e-commerce business with the logistics delivery of Yingyun Logistics, thereby providing users with higher quality and richer services.

They announced that they have reached an agreement with the board of directors of Inland Logistics. This acquisition, worth 4 billion pounds, will be carried out in the form of a stock swap. Argos Group will pay holders of Intal Logistics shares to Caesars Fund and DS Holdings ( Cavendish Trust Fund) issued an additional 800 million shares at a consideration of 5 pounds per share to complete the wholly-owned acquisition of Inland Logistics.

In this way, Caesars Fund originally held 95% of the shares of Yinglun Logistics and will obtain 7s shares; DS Holdings (Cavendish Trust Fund) once merged "Speed" Logistics into Yinglun Logistics and obtained 5% of its shares. , now able to obtain 40 million Argos shares.

After the merger, the total share capital of Argos Retail Group will increase to 4.1 billion shares. In addition to the 40 million Argos shares acquired after the merger with British Transport Logistics, DS Holdings holds a total of 2s shares, accounting for 50.37%. Caesar Fund It will hold an 18.5% stake in Argos Retail Group.

Yingyun Logistics will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Argos Retail Group. In addition to continuing to maintain its original business, it will also improve express delivery speed for Argos.com users.

It is worth mentioning that when Caesars Fund acquired British Transport Logistics, it purchased the British logistics giant for about 2.5 billion pounds.

However, after New Year's Day this year, the entire British postal industry pattern has undergone great changes - the British postal regulatory agency will begin to implement new rules, allowing various postal companies to compete openly and "share" the cake of the British postal service market.

Prior to this, Yingyun Logistics had obtained one of the 13 long-term business licenses issued by the British Postal Regulatory Agency. With their scale, and after merging with "Speeda" Logistics, they snatched the Royal Mail out. The biggest piece of cake.

In addition, through the cooperation with Argos.com during this period, Yingyun Logistics has actively expanded its business in many European countries, so it is normal for the "selling body" price to rise to 4 billion pounds.

After all, when Deutsche Post acquired British Transport Logistics in September 2005, the price had already reached 3.5 billion pounds.

…

The room fell silent again.

Bonnie's face was still a little rosy. She rested her head on Barron's solid shoulder and traced the lines of his muscles with her fingers.

"By the way, dear, Dasha called me two days ago. She is also watching the World Cup in Germany, but at that time I still had to deal with company matters..."

After hearing Bonnie's words, Barron kissed her forehead and said with a smile:

"We will go to Germany together in two days, so that you can be together."

The Dasha in Bonnie's mouth is Abu's current wife Dasha Zhukova, and Bonnie often goes shopping with her.

As the owner of Chelsea, Barron is not surprised at all that Abramovich and the others will go to the World Cup.

It's just that he didn't meet each other when he was in Germany before - of course, that's why 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.

But before that, in addition to the listing of Argos Retail Group and the merger with British Express Logistics, Barron also needs to participate in an important ceremony before he can leave London.

Speaking of which, after the merger of Argos Retail Group and British Transport Logistics, Argos's share price rose again. Nearly ten days after its listing, Argos's share price has stood at 5 pounds. At this time, the market value of Argos Retail Group has exceeded 200 Billion pounds!