News
Monspire, a London, UK-based cashflow management SaaS platform, powered by AI, raised £600K in funding.
The round was led by Fuel Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to launch to market and rapidly onboard new businesses.
Founded by serial tech entrepreneurs Simon Draper and Ben Gillen, Monspire provides a platform that enables small businesses to predict their cashflow needs through its forecasting tool, empowering them to spot funding gaps, while providing access to invoice financing to help plug gaps.
The company has also joined AWS’ Startup Loft Accelerator, an equity-free programme supporting early-stage startups in Europe, Middle East and Africa with technology, product development and go-to-market advice.
JD Sports is again being talked of as a possible buyer for Missguided, the fast fashion firm that last week said its founder-CEO would step down and that it had called in Teneo as strategic advisors.
Industry sources told Thisismoney that JD is mulling buying into the company that’s currently seeking a partner with the infrastructure and platform to help it in the next stage of its recovery.
It’s unclear whether JD would come in as a partner or would want to buy the whole business.
JD was originally reported to be in talks about taking a stake in the struggling business last September. Neither Misguided nor JD confirmed those reports at the time.
In the event, turnaround specialist Alteri Investors took a 50% stake last December.
Misguided has been grappling with problems for several years with its issues pre-dating the pandemic and high costs having been identified as a particular problem for it.
Having been an online-focused operation, in the last decade it dived into giant physical stores in premium malls but later revised this ambitious physical retail expansion programme, closing the stores.
However, its clothing is currently available in physical concessions in around 100 Asda stores.
Despite its expansion plans and earlier predictions of a return to profitability, the pandemic and the subsequent supply chain crisis put paid to that.
Reports said that JD Sports’ interest in the company is at an early stage, despite the rumours last year.
British challenger bank Starling has completed a £130.5m fundraise from previous investors to “build a war chest for acquisitions”.
The latest funding came at a pre-money valuation of more than £2.5bn for the London-headquartered digital bank.
Funds came from all of Starling’s previous backers, including Goldman Sachs Growth Equity and the Qatar Investment Authority.
“This will enable us to continue our growth and to build a war chest for acquisitions. We are looking at a number of potential targets,” a Starling spokesperson said.
Starling did not share any details on its acquisition targets. However, UKTN understands that Starling has £400m in surplus capital on its balance sheet that could be used for acquisitions.
A source told UKTN that Starling is looking at targets in the lending space. Starling has previously been linked with mortgage lender Kensington, with the challenger bank reportedly in a bidding war with high street bank Barclays.
However, this deal is not finalised and UKTN understands that Starling is keeping other mortgage lenders on the table.
Starling has previously acquired UK-based buy-to-let mortgage lender Fleet Mortgages in a £50m cash and stock deal.
Founded in 2014 by Anne Boden, Starling provides personal and business accounts, along with B2B banking and payments services through its banking-as-a-service model.
Last year Starling raised a total of £322m, with £272m of that coming in a Series D funding round in March. That investment gave the bank unicorn status – privately held companies valued at $1bn or more.
Boden has previously said that the fintech company is aiming to go public by 2023.
Starling has been profitable on a monthly basis since October 2020 and last year saw its revenues soar by 600%.
Wearable technology company Kinexon has raised a $130 million Series A round with plans to advance its automated innovations in both its industrial and sports businesses that already include performance tracking and data analytics.
The funding was led by private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, with co-investments from BMW i Ventures and Telekom Innovation Pool. Based in Munich and with an office in Chicago, Kinexon has expanded to over 300 employees with a major emphasis on basketball.
The company is the NBA’s top provider for physical data, working with 80 percent of the league on live player and ball tracking—the goal being to help with training and in-game strategy. Kinexon, overall, has 400-plus sports clients and counting, as it continues to branch out to both college and professional football. It has also worked with FIFA, MLB and has also been integrating data into sports broadcasting through augmented reality applications.
Two months after having invested in home and personal care brand What Matters, French investment firm Eurozeo is acquiring a minority stake in Gisou, the haircare brand launched in 2015 by Negin Mirsalehi and her business partner Maurits Stibbe.
This acquisition of an undisclosed amount will keep its two founders as majority shareholders and takes place two years after the Vaulter7 fund (which specializes in cosmetics, wellness and lifestyle start-ups) invested in the company.
Gisou, founded by Dutch influencer of Iranian origin, Negin Mirsalehi, and her business partner Maurits Stibbe, offers a dozen haircare products infused or formulated from honey. A market positioning that is by no means coincidental since Mirsalehi's mother is a hairdresser and her father is a beekeeper.
In addition to being sold on its website, the brand is also available in department stores and beauty retailers including Sephora, Galeries Lafayette, Selfridges, Douglas and Mecca.
"Eurazeo will support Gisou in its international multi-channel growth and product range diversification, leveraging its operational expertise in brands. Its investment will be used to enhance Gisou's digital and e-commerce capabilities, strengthen the brand and its community, and build the organization, specifically in North America," said the Eurazeo fund in a statement.
In 2020, Gisou's sales were valued at around 10 million euros, a figure that could multiply tenfold by the end of 2023 due to its product range's expansion. The brand has recently introduced a skin oil and a lip oil to its product portfolio.
VC firm Cambridge Innovation Capital has raised £225m for its second fund to invest in deeptech and life science startups based in Cambridge.
The fund will mainly invest in startups at the seed and Series A stage. A typical investment will be as much as £5m, with £15m reserved for follow on fundraising.
It brings Cambridge Innovation Capital’s assets under management to $1bn. Founded in 2013, the venture firm is the preferred investment partner of the University of Cambridge.
It has previously invested in approximately 40 startups, including quantum computing software company Riverlane and cancer immunotherapeutic firm Epitopea.
The oversubscribed Fund II is Cambridge Innovation’s largest fundraise to date. It follows the venture firm’s £75m fundraise in 2016, which went on to invest in the likes of CMR Surgical and Pragmatic Semiconductor.
“Cambridge, UK is one of the fastest-growing science and technology innovation ecosystems in the world,” said Andrew Williamson, managing partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital, also known as CIC. “Since our inception, CIC and our co-investors have invested more than £2bn in sectors as diverse as robotics, semiconductors, genomics, gene therapy, therapeutics, liquid biopsy, artificial intelligence, and edge computing.”
The capital for its latest fund came from a group of about 50 institutional and strategic investors, with almost half of the cash coming from those based in the UK.
Its second fund has already invested in six startups.
Cambridge Innovation Capital has also co-founded DeepTech Labs and Start Codon, two business accelerators based in the university city.
According to government research, Cambridge is the UK’s top regional tech hub thanks to the high levels of VC funding and startup creation in the city.
Cambridge has become a magnet for deeptech startups, particularly in quantum computing. The city is the home of Cambridge Quantum Computing, which last year completed a merger with US-based Honeywell Quantum Solutions to create a quantum computing powerhouse named Quantinuum.
UK Retail sales volumes fell by 1.4% in March 2022 following a fall of 0.5% in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday. That said, sales volumes were 2.2% above their pre-coronavirus February 2020 levels.
The largest contribution to the fall came from non-store retailing with volumes down 7.9% after a fall of 6.9% in February. The proportion of retail sales online fell to 26%, its lowest proportion since February 2020 (22.7%). Its peak of 37.1% had come a little over a year ago in the middle of a lockdown.
Again, though, even with the drops, e-sales volumes were 20.3% above February 2020.
Non-food store sales volumes rose by 1.3% in March, although fashion didn’t contribute to the rise with DIY on many consumers’ minds instead.
Clothing stores’ sales volumes actually dropped 0.5%. And department stores were down 0.1% month-on-month.
But the sub-sector of ‘other non-food stores' reported a monthly increase in sales volumes of 2.9% in March. This was because of strong growth in second-hand goods stores.
Overall, it seems small business struggled and Government High Streets Task Force expert and ShopAppy founder Dr Jackie Mulligan said: “For countless small independent retailers, March was merciless. The thousands of small high street businesses we work with said it was extremely challenging last month and this data reflects that. Inflation is really starting to take its toll on people's finances and that is rapidly impacting sales on the high street.”
And Victoria Jenkins, CEO of London-based fashion retailer Unhidden, added: “Sales are currently slow. An additional challenge for us, compared to fast fashion brands, is that we are made to order, which means producing items is much more time-intensive. We are also currently targeting a demographic that the fashion industry, sadly, has long excluded, namely the disabled community. We are still trust building with our prospective customers and that's another challenge right now.”
Dalia Hawley, skincare manufacturer at Dalia Botanqiue, also showed that beauty isn’t immune to the downturn. “I sell handmade natural skincare both online and in a local social enterprise craft shop. I have noticed a significant drop in sales, both online and in store over the past month or so. I believe people are now viewing my range as more of a treat as opposed to an item they previously didn't think twice about buying a few times a month,” she said.
Online beauty and technology group THG reported its preliminary results for last year on Thursday, plus a Q1 trading update that showed it weathering the current inflation and supply chain storm fairly well.
But perhaps even more interesting is that CEO Matthew Moulding confirmed speculation that the company has had buyout approaches. However, it doesn’t look like it will be up for sale any time soon.
“I can confirm that the board has received indicative proposals from numerous parties in recent weeks [but] has concluded that each and every proposal to date has been unacceptable, failing to reflect the fair value of the group, and confirms that THG is not currently in receipt of any approaches,” he said.
“We continue to focus on delivering our exciting growth strategy across a number of large global sectors, and prepare to step up to the premium segment of the [London Stock Exchange] at the appropriate time.”
For the first three months of this year, it saw revenue of £520.2 million, up 17.2% against last year (YoY) and 87.9% over two years (2YoY).
It hailed “a strong result considering the particularly challenging comparable global lockdown period, with the long-term trend towards e-commerce continuing to support new customer acquisition and retention”.
THG Beauty delivered sales growth of 19.7% YoY to £264.7 million, with partnerships across leading brands “continuing to strengthen across the retail destination sites with 24 new partners joining the platform in Q1”.
Group apps continued to “drive improvements in order values and time between orders, with influencers also playing an important role in cost-efficient marketing”. They generated around 10% of total group D2C revenue for Q1 on a tracked basis.
Its key Ingenuity Commerce business that gets other brands online also had a good quarter. Ingenuity revenue was £51.9 million, up 281%. And Ingenuity Commerce revenue rose 47.9% to £11.8 million.
In Q1, the number of live client websites was 202, up from 133 a year ago, with recurring revenue at 76% compared to 55%.
THG said that while companies may be rethinking their capital spending due to current pressures, “digital transformation projects remain essential, reflected in the strength of the THG Ingenuity new business pipeline”.
Looking back at 2021, THG said that on a preliminary basis, revenue rose to £2.179 billion from £1.613 billion YoY. And the operating loss narrowed to £137 million from £481 million.
Adjusted EBITDA rose to £161 million from £151 million. This represents a margin of 7.4% (down from 9.3%) reflecting cost headwinds in H2. In fact, the impact of these headwinds trebled in H2 relative to H1, but it believes “much of this pressure is short term and will dissipate over time”.
As well as the one-year comparison on revenue, the company said that group revenue rose 95% on a constant currency basis 2YoY.
All divisions grew, with THG beauty performing “particularly well”. It saw revenues of £1.18 billion, representing 51% of the group's total revenue compared to 47% in the previous year as strong organic sales growth was complemented by the acquisitions of Dermstore, Bentley and Cult Beauty.
THG Ingenuity grew its revenues 42% YoY to £194 million with the Ingenuity commerce division growing 135%. Its revenue was up to £45.4 million and included 62% recurring revenue rather than 48% a year earlier. Recurring revenue includes SaaS licence fees, monthly brand-building fees, infrastructure service fees, revenue share and a number of additional services.
International sales accounted for 58% of the total, down from 61% a year earlier, after it saw very strong UK growth of 46%. This was helped both by organic growth and acquisitions.
Matthew Moulding said: “In our first full year as a public company, 2021 saw us scale revenue and expand our business model, well ahead of targets set at IPO. We delivered a record revenue performance for the year”. He added that on a two-year basis, THG has effectively doubled the size of the business.
London-based fintech startup Pillar has raised £13m in pre-seed funding for its platform that gives immigrants access to credit when moving to a new country.
The funding round was led by Global Founders Capital and Backed VC. Angel investors for the round include Wagestream co-founders Peter Briffet and Portman Wills.
Pillar was founded to serve the needs of migrants who, despite having plenty of cash, are unable to secure credit services like loans and credit cards due to the difficulty of taking a credit file to another country.
Co-founded in 2021 by Revolut’s former head of lending Ashutosh Bhatt, Pillar provides those moving internationally with access to credit products using open banking data and analytics.
Bhatt was inspired to co-found Pillar, along with company CTO Adam Lewis, by his own experience as an immigrant.
“Ever since I moved to the UK and found I couldn’t access any of the everyday products I had in India this has been a problem I have been passionate about solving,” Bhatt said. “I arrived earning a good salary at Barclays and found I couldn’t even get an iPhone!”
Bhatt noted that years later, the problem hasn’t changed, “so we have set upon building a globally scalable platform that breaks down data silos and credit borders as well as solves this massive problem faced by financially secure people moving to a new country”.
Bhatt added: “Through Pillar, anyone moving to the UK from another country can have a credit card in their pocket before they board their flight and instantly get on the credit ladder. Plus, we aren’t stopping with this use case, we want to take this service and experience globally to credit markets around the world.”
A number of recently founded startups have been trying to solve the problem of providing credit products to those who are ‘credit invisible’, including Yonder, which recently raised £20m in seed funding.
Spanish fashion company Mango continues to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability. After closing 2021 successfully with a good financial structure, the company has just extended the maturity date of its syndicated loan, scheduled for 2022 and 2023 and with an outstanding balance of €236 million, until 2028. The company has linked the transaction to its ESG (environmental, social and good corporate governance) criteria. The transaction was led by CaixaBank.
The deal signed on Wednesday, April 19 enables the company to extend its repayment date, improve the cost of its debt and double the availability of revolving credit lines. The agreement also includes a new syndicated loan of €200 million from which €150 million will be amortized on a straight-line basis until 2027, while the remaining €50 million are part of a financing facility that can be used until 2024 for capex investments and could be paid off in a single bullet repayment in 2028 if drawn down.
However, the cost of the loan could be reduced if sustainable targets are met. The company must achieve 100% use of sustainable cotton, recycled polyester and cellulose fibers by 2025, as well as reduce scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions by 10%.
"This is a historic transaction for the company. Not only is it the first time that we’ve linked the cost of debt to sustainability indicators, but we have also managed to extend the repayment calendar, improved its cost, and doubled our financing capacity," said Margarita Salvans, CFO of Mango.
In addition to CaixaBank, the transaction was coordinated by BBVA and Banco de Sabadell. Banco Santander, Erste Bank, Deutsche Bank, Ibercaja and Unicaja also participated in the transaction, while the Barcelona law firm Broseta served as legal advisor.
This strategic move comes at a time when Mango has just completed the full repayment of the €240 million credit line requested in spring 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, to the Official Credit Institute (ICO). At the end of 2021, the company had a negative net debt of €8 million.
Founded in 1984 in Barcelona, Mango is present in more than 110 countries through a retail network of 2,447 points-of-sale. Its latest sustainable projects include a collaboration with the company I:CO aimed at promoting circular economy by placing Committed Box containers throughout a selection of its stores allowing clients to recycle their clothing. In fiscal year 2021, Mango generated a turnover of €2,234 million, up 21.3% year-on-year, with the online channel accounting for 42%.