After eleven years of absence, the Douglas perfumery chain is going public again. This serves one goal above all else.
The Douglas perfumery chain returns to the trading floor. Today, securities are traded in Frankfurt for the first time. The company management will take part in the so-called Ringing Bell Ceremony in the trading floor in the morning. The first share price will be announced in Frankfurt at around 9:15 a.m. and then the stock exchange bell will ring.
A total of almost 32.7 million shares will be issued at a price of 26 euros each, as Douglas announced on Tuesday. This means that almost 32 percent of the company will be listed on the stock exchange. The main shareholders remain the old owners, the financial investor CVC and the Kreke family. According to the company’s own information, the IPO is expected to bring around 850 million euros into its coffers. The sum is to be increased by CVC and Kreke in order to reduce the mountain of debt amounting to around three billion euros. According to the company, the remaining debts should be refinanced under better conditions.
Douglas also wants to expand further. More than 200 new locations are expected to be opened by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year, almost half of them in Central Eastern Europe. There are also plans to convert and modernize 400 existing branches. Douglas wants to break the five billion euro sales mark by 2026.
The financial investor Advent and the founding Kreke family as minority shareholders took Douglas off the stock exchange in 2013 in order to realign the company. In 2015, the financial investor CVC took over the majority. Douglas has 1,850 branches in 22 countries across Europe and employs around 18,000 people.
Source: Stern
