Dearbail Jordan
2 for 1 tickets to Casablanca, this coming Monday
Simon Nixon, the founder of moneysupermarket.com, is set to reap up to £126.6 million when the price comparison site floats on the London Stock Exchange later this month, valued at between £841 million and £1 billion.
The company unveiled a price range of between 170p and 210p per share this morning as it prepared to visit institutions to drum up interest in subscribing to the flotation.
Mr Nixon will sell 60.3 million shares when the business comes to market in the final week of July. As well as the £126.6 million that he could gain, if moneysupermarket.com lists at the top of the range, Mr Nixon could also net an additional £64.2 million if the company's float is over subscribed, bringing his total gain to £190.8 million.
Duncan Cameron, previously the other major shareholder in moneysupermarket.com alongside Mr Nixon, will sell off his entire shareholding in the company, giving him a windfall of up to £47.2 million. Last month, Mr Cameron sold the majority of his stake in the business for £162 million. Mr Cameron and Mr Nixon have not spoken to each other since 2001 after a disagreement about strategy.
moneysupermarket.com is hoping to raise £180 million through the share offer, some of which will be used to pay back the sum borrowed to buy out Mr Cameron.
The business is offering 41 per cent of the business to potential investors and Mr Nixon will retain nearly a 50 per cent stake in the company going forward, while senior managers will continue to hold shares in group. Mr Nixon will be prevented from selling his stake for three years.
If moneysupermarket.com lists at the top end of the range, at 210p, its value will be around ten times sales of £104 million for the 12 months to December 31, 2006.
Moneysupermarket.com also announced today that Michael Wemms, a former executive director at Tesco, the supermarket giant, has been appointed as the company's senior non-executive director. He will join Gerald Corbett, the former chief executive at Railtrack and previous chairman at Woolworths, who is the chairman at moneysupermarket.com.
Mr Nixon began his business in 1993 for £4,000 before transforming his company into moneysupermarket.com in 1999.
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Tom, go ahead and invest. I won't be though. Too many competitors, ropey business model, and the owners have shown what they think by taking as much money as possible out of the business at every opportunity - to date over 30 million. This flotation though is the last and biggest opportunity to make themselves and their advising investment banks very rich - I'm not handing them my money though, I'm not going near it.
David Matthews, Bucks , UK
>How on earth can a middleman be worth ã1,000,000,000 ????<
People have always been able to sell high value leads - since long before the internet even existed.
If I can provide you with a lead for $10, that 1 in 10 you convert to a sale that generates you $500 profit, you're still making $400 profit out of me, the middle man. That makes me very valuable to you (unless you're stupid).
Paul, London, UK
I think the word you're looking for is ingenuity, andy. But then again if you had that, you wouldn't be enlightening us with these bitter comments!
tom, london,
Does Moneysupermarket make the prepondernace of its money from ACTUAL internet mortgage, insurance and travel transactions (start to finish), internet advertising and other internet end to end transactions like setting up a credit card, savings or bank account... if it did it would warrant a huge multiple... however I just wonder if you added up the revenue it gets from Paa leads, its encore mortgage sourcing system, its d and p mortgage packaging arm and its branded lender abacus exactly what percentage of the turnover that would equate to... my betting is these old school businesses count for quite a large proportion of the total turnover.... factor in the competion from new price comparrisson sites and it leaves you wondering... good business sure, but is the multiple valid?
abharrisson, london,
How on earth can a middleman be worth £1,000,000,000 ????
Looks as if the stupidity of the dotcom era is upon us again
Andy, Yorkshire,
Interessting piece. Lets just remeber Moneysupermarkets roots go back to mortgages and mortgage advice. Yet its being valued at internet multiples. I just wonder when you look at the numbers in depth how much turnover comes from people physically applying for mortgages, insurance and travel over the net as an entire internet transaction (which would support the internet multiples), and how much comes from what I would call traditional business eg Its Paa mortgage leads brand, its mortgage packaging brands of abacus and D and P and its mortgage sourcing software.
abharrisson, london,