Philipp Kreibohm, Christoph Cordes, Marc Appelhoff and Johannes Schaback (from left) at the IPO in Frankfurt.
(Photo: imago/Hannelore Förster)
Berlin Less than a year ago, the online furniture retailer Home24 snapped up the Butlers decorative chain. Now the Berliners themselves want to be taken over: The Austrian furniture giant XXXLutz is offering around 250 million euros for the company, which is suffering severely from the consumer mood in Europe, which has fallen due to the Ukraine war and inflation.
7.50 euros per share would be offered in cash, said the XXXLutz subsidiary RAS, through which the transaction is processed, on Wednesday evening in Vienna. The Home24 paper had previously gone out of business at around EUR 3.30.
“We are very happy and feel vindicated that one of the largest furniture families in the world wants to buy us,” says Marc Appelhoff, who has been the sole boss of Home24 since 2020. He should continue to manage the business at Home24: “We were assured that we can work independently on our vision and receive support for it.” The takeover bid is a good thing for the approximately 2800 employees as well as the shareholders.
The furniture giant XXXLutz, founded by the Seifert family – known for the red chair as an advertising logo – operates 370 furniture stores in 13 European countries and has annual sales of more than five billion euros. This makes the Ikea competitor significantly larger than Home24.
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The company, which emerged from the then start-up forge Rocket Internet, had a turnover of around 615 million euros last year and ended up just above the breakeven point in operational terms. So far this year, however, sales have declined significantly. “It’s a challenging environment,” says Appelhoff.
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If the takeover goes through, Home24 will be taken off the stock exchange. According to Appelhoff, the time on the stock market has been characterized by “many ups and downs”. After Home24 started in 2018 with a market value of around 600 million euros, it was recently around 100 million euros. In addition to Westwing, Home24 has made the online sale of furniture socially acceptable in Germany and Europe.
The XXXLutz subsidiary RAS has already secured around 50 percent of the shares in Home24. In addition, there will be another ten percent from a planned capital increase excluding subscription rights for the other owners of the online furniture retailer. According to Appelhoff, no decision has yet been made on how to proceed with the listed Brazilian subsidiary Mobly. Home24 continues to hold the majority there.
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