BikeExchange ASX Float is Underway Seeking $20 Million

Following on from our article last month in which we reported that BikeExchange appeared to be preparing to float on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), the initial public offering (IPO) is now underway.

Bike Exchange is seeking to raise $20 million at 26 cents per share. Because they’re only offering to sell a portion of the total shares this would imply a market capitalisation for BikeExchange of $76 million.

As is required with all new listings, BikeExhange has issued a very detailed prospectus which runs to over 160 pages and can be downloaded here.

According to the timetable the retail offering will close on Monday 25^th Jan and the shares will commence trading from Tuesday 9^th February.

At the time of writing (24^th January) BikeExchange is already appearing on the ASX register with the code BEX, marked as ‘Pending’.

Bike Exchange was founded in 2007 by Sam Salter and Jason Wyatt.

According to the prospectus, BikeExchange has seen a surge in business since Covid-19. E‑commerce revenue increased by 492% over the first half of 2020 with transaction numbers increasing by 292%. Sales lead enquiries also grew by 334%.

From October 2019 to Sept 2020 the platform was visited by over 25.1 million consumers. (It’s not clear if this is unique consumers or if the same consumer revisiting is counted again.)

Despite the large volume of visitors and transactions the prospectus shows that BikeExchange has been trading at a loss of the past three financial years of $2,906,000 for 2017/18 $4,541,000 for 2018/19 and $2,907,000 for 2019/20.

BikeExchange say they had 504 active business customers (ie bike shops etc) in Australia and New Zealand as at November 2020. In addition, they had 284 in North America 577 in Europe and 83 in Colombia for a total of 1,448.

In Australia, their biggest segment of users by age is 25 to 34 years old, comprising approximately 28% of total users with a progressive decline in each 10 year age cohort above that. Their gender split in Australia is 27.9% female, 72.1% male.