DGAP-News LetsBuyIt Group AG: First Day of Trading
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DGAP-News: LetsBuyIt France SARL / Key word(s): Miscellaneous
LetsBuyIt Group AG: First Day of Trading
07.09.2011 / 07:45
LetsBuyIt Group AG
(´LBI´, ´the Group´ or ´the Company´)
First Day of Trading
The Directors of LBI are pleased to announce the commencement of trading on
the Open Market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The Company will trade
under the symbol B49.
Overview
LetsBuyIt Group AG is the owner of an online price comparison platform and
social shopping site branded as LetsBuyIt.com - a highly recognisable and
successful online brand from the dotcom era. The services are currently
available in France, Germany and the UK and list over 50 million offers
sold by more than 1,500 merchants. Both these quantums are growing every
day.
LetsBuyIt is all about providing the next generation online shopping
comparison experience for both retailers and shoppers with its focus on a
fully automated State of the Art operating system, social networking tools
and a new outlook for the online shopping industry.
Thanks to its advanced technology which has been developed over the last
three LetsBuyIt is able to break and change the old and out-dated Cost per
Click (´CPC´) model which has haunted the small merchants for many years,
to a fixed fee model, therefore taking the lead in a highly lucrative
market.
The Company has taken the move to become a public company on the Open
Market in order to have better access to funding which will allow it to
execute its strategic plans to expand into other European countries.
History of the Brand
LetsBuyIt was founded in 1998 and quickly became the European leader in
on-line Co-Buying services, successfully enabling customers to group
together to drive down the price of items through mass purchasing.
By 2000 it had become the best known online shopping and cooperative buying
website in Europe. At its peak, LetsBuyIt.com was spending over £250
million in marketing and TV advertising, which promoted the company´s logo
- an ant - to become instantly recognisable. The company had more than 2.5
million members and over 350 employees, with TV advertising shown across
several countries. However, in 2001 at the height of the dot.com bubble,
the company went into administration.
In 2007, the assets, including all domain names, a worldwide registered
trademark, the ant logo, together with a highly regarded brand name, were
purchased by the Group with the view to re-launch LetsBuyIt.com as a price
comparison platform. The team spent the next two years creating and
populating the website, while marketing the LetsBuyIt brand into Europe,
with much success.
LetsBuyIt.com was re launched in 2009 in three countries - Germany, France
and the UK, where it had traditionally been the most successful.
Market Advantage
The online price comparison market is highly competitive and management
team of LBI knew they would need to deliver a more responsive user
experience to outperform their competitors. This being the case, LBI spent
12 months following the launch of the website developing a fully automated
e-commerce engine and platform, using algorithms and artificial
intelligence, which uniquely sets apart LetsBuyIt from its competitors. The
benefits of being fully automated means the products´ prices are updated as
soon as a change is detected, as opposed to the more common daily or weekly
pricing and categorisation updates inputted manually by a team of people.
This obviously, provides shoppers with a better experience, knowing they
are receiving the most up to date offer and price.
The Company also offers a unique fixed price small merchant platform which
defines LetsBuyIt from its competitors; allowing boutique retailers the
opportunity to control their overheads and not have to implement complex
online sales tracking systems, whilst still receiving exposure on a major
price comparison shopping website.
Finally, the Group believes that its focus on Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO) which it carries out in partnership with a leading online marketing
company, will mean that more shoppers will naturally be directed, via
Google or any other major search engines, to the LetsBuyIt website over
time. The websites have also been developed to take advantage of the rising
trend in social interactivity, where buyers and browsers can exchange
advice and comments about their purchases.
Operations
LetsBuyIt.com is a website providing online price comparison and social
shopping services. The Company´s head office is located in Paris, France.
The Company currently engages 20 people in Europe & Israel.
LetsBuyIt is currently active in France, Germany and the United Kingdom
with three different website versions:
www.letsbuyit.fr
www.letsbuyit.de
www.letsbuyit.co.uk
The operating activity of the website is managed by LetsBuyIt France, which
develops and markets the LetsBuyIt website within its territories. The
technical side of the website is managed by LetsBuyIt France in conjunction
with its Israeli office, through a partnership with Whiteweb, a specialist
in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Internet marketing.
LetsBuyIt allows customers to purchase products at the lowest possible
price by providing on its website all the actual best practices of online
shopping. The aim of the Company is to become the leading shopping portal
and an e-commerce online community meeting point. Indeed, distinctive
features of LetsBuyIt are its social tools which give customers the
opportunity to exchange opinions on their buying experiences and product
purchases.
Strategy and Reason for Listing
LetsBuyIt is embarking on a large scale marketing effort to put it back as
the leading price comparison website. This effort is being launched in
cooperation with one of the world´s most experienced Internet marketing
teams, WhiteWeb, the group that created 888.com (the world´s leading
on-line gambling portal). LetsBuyIt entered into a strategic partnership
with WhiteWeb in December 2010.
LetsBuyIt is ready to capitalise on the huge market potential created by
the Internet. In 2009, online retail sales in Western Europe reached a
value of EUR 68 billion and are projected to grow to EUR 114 billion by
2014 (Compound Annual Growth Rate, ´CAGR´ 2009-2014 +11%).
LetsBuyIt´s strategy is to derive revenues from three distinct streams,
these being:
Affiliation: One of the main sources of revenues for LetsBuyIt comes
through its affiliation relationship with the many thousands of merchants
who wish to sell their products online. The merchants provide LetsBuyIt
with their catalogues of products, and LetsBuyIt then aggregates all the
catalogues from the different merchants so that users have a larger pool of
products to choose from at the same time. Once a shopper finds the product
he wants, the LetsBuyIt website gives him a list of the merchants selling
it. If the user buys the product, then LetsBuyIt gets a commission on the
purchase.
Direct Merchant Platform (DMP): Unique to LetsBuyIt, the Company is
targeting small merchants and boutique stores who would not normally have
success on large Price Comparison sites, by offering them a solution to
display their catalogue on the website for a fixed monthly fee, regardless
the number of sales or clicks they receive. LetsBuyIt offers visibility to
the merchants and generates traffic to their sites.
Targeted Advertising: LetsBuyIt displays banners on its website where
publishers can advertise.
LetsBuyIt works closely with all the major online affiliates, of which
there are around 15 within Europe which manage the product catalogues for
all the major online retailers in the world. The Group constantly uploads
the affiliates´ catalogues and automatically categorises the products for
its own websites, which are then shown to shoppers with the relevant offers
and pricing. Unique to the market, this is a 24-7 fully automated process.
Financials
The capital employed in the Company as at 31 May 2011 was EUR18,110,995. Of
this amount, EUR9,352,714 relates to the investment made directly by the
Company over the past three years in the development of the Letsbuyit
brand, and the development of the state of the art technical infrastructure
which now allows the Company to move forward rapidly and consolidate and
build upon the significant competitive advantage secured by this investment
and development.
The Company business plan envisages significant and rapid growth over the
next four years with turnover forecast to reach EUR30 million in 2015
generating an operating profit of approximately EUR11 million. This
represents average annual growth of 35% over the four years to 2015. During
this period it is the Company´s intention to invest a further EUR11 million
into further technical development, opening sites and developing the
markets in Russia and Poland with the objective of attaining sustainable
profitability during 2013. The unique technology developed by the company
over the past three years places Letsbuyit in an unrivalled position to
capture significant market share quickly in each market in which it
operates. It is this opportunity that will allow LBI to move quickly to
sustained profitability and from there to achieve high year on year profit
growth.
Major Share Holders
LBI comes to the market with a free float of 40%. The remaining shares are
held as follows:
Founders, Management, WhiteWeb - through Alpha Securities Fund 40%
Millennium TMT LBIT Holdings Ltd - a Dubai based technology fund 20%
Profile:
LetsBuyIt.com is a platform providing online price comparison and social
shopping services.
LetsBuyIt is currently active in France, Germany and United Kingdom with
three different website versions.
The Company currently reports in its websites over 50 million products sold
by more than 1,500 different merchants. LetsBuyIt makes continuous and live
updates of its product database and indexes new merchants with their
products on a daily basis.
LetsBuyIt allows customers to purchase products at the lowest possible
price by providing on its website all the actual best practices of online
shopping. The aim of the Company is to become the leading shopping portal
and an e-commerce online community meeting point. Indeed, distinctive
features of LetsBuyIt are the social tools which give customers the
opportunity to exchange opinions on their buying experiences, products etc.
For Further Information, please Contact: pr@letsbuyit.com
LetsBuyIt Group AG +33 1 83 64 77 38
Emmanuel Noirhomme, CEO
Oscar Zogbi, CFO
Leander (Investor Relations and Media Relations, UK) +44 (0)7795 168 157
Christian Taylor-Wilkinson
Stoffels Kommunikation (Media Relations, Germany) +49 40 398 077 131
Herbert Stoffels
End of Corporate News
07.09.2011 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a
company of EquityStory AG.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
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138453 07.09.2011
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