MySale IPO heralds Sir Philip's return to stock market

Jamie Jackson said that the group decided to list on the junior London market rather than Australia’s ASX Exchange because he and his brother were “both Brits and we started in rag trade 25 years ago in London.”

Mr Jackson added that he considered London to be "the heart of the fashion industry" and there was also a considerable time zone advantage when dealing with both the US and Asia.

At the moment, MySale has a London office in Fulham with 40 staff but it is looking at bigger premises in the West End, presumably near Arcadia’s headquarters in Oxford Circus. It will remain headquartered in Australia.

The company expects to “go live” with its UK operations in the next two weeks and is already taking membership requests.

MySale earlier this month bought UK flash sale site Cocosa from the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

Cocosa was closed down earlier this year but the sale was agreed at a price that “both parties agreed on, not a nominal sum”, Mr Jackson confirmed. Cocosa will be relaunched globally alongside MySale’s existing brand in the next couple of months to offer a higher quality offering. Cocosa had a database of more than 800,000 customers, which will act as a launchpad for MySale’s UK operations.

MySale already has more than 10.5m members across Australasia but is aiming to break into the US market. Its American business, which has only been active for the last seven days, has already had 25,000 members registered, Mr Jackson said.

The market is expected to heavily scrutinise the flotation of the Sir Philip backed retailer as it comes on a backdrop of growing fears the IPO market is softening.

Fellow knighted retail veterans, former Marks & Spencer chairman Sir Stuart Rose and former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy have recently had mixed fortunes. Fat Face, which Sir Stuart chairs, was forced to scrap its IPO amid weak investor demand, while B&M Bargains, which Sir Terry chairs, formally kicked off listing plans last week.

Mr Jackson said he was not concerned about the spread of “flotation fatigue” and said that the business had always been profitable. However, the company’s intention to float statement did not contain any profit figures.

Instead, the company reported revenues for the year ending 30 June 2013 had increased by 63.7pc to A$183.6m (£101.9m) while revenues for the six months to 31 December 2013 were A$3.7m (£4.9m). MySale said that adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the year ended June 2013 was A$8.9m (£4.9m) compared with A$3.7m (£2.05m) the year before.

Despite MySale's global reach the company offsets foreign exchange movements by factoring additional costs into the price of the goods included in its flash sales.

Macquarie Capital is acting as the company's adviser while Manchester based advisory firm Zeus Capital is acting as broker and bookrunner on the IPO.

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