Online optician Mister Spex wants to go public

Status: 14.06.2021 11:16 a.m.

The list of companies that want to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange this year is getting longer and longer. Now the online optician Mister Spex is also planning to go out onto the floor to finance its expansion course. The Berlin online optician Mister Spex needs fresh money to finance its expansion plans abroad and wants to go public on the Frankfurt stock exchange by the end of September. The company would like to sell new shares from a capital increase as well as papers from existing shareholders and raise at least 225 million euros. It is Mister Spex’s second attempt to go public. There were already plans in 2018 to finance growth with the help of an IPO. Ultimately, however, the company managed to raise the necessary money through new financing rounds from private investors, so that the IPO was canceled. The shareholders include investors such as Goldman Sachs, DN Capital, Intershop founder Stephan Schambach and StudiVZ founder Ehssan Dariani. Global Growth Capital, a subsidiary of the Internet holding company Rocket Internet, also provided a loan.

Strong increase in sales

Founder and CEO Dirk Graber is quoted as saying: “The IPO is the next logical step for us to strengthen our position as a leading, fundamentally digitally oriented European omnichannel optical brand and to support our long-term growth strategy.” In fact, since its founding at the end of 2007, Mister Spex has succeeded in taking market share from the dominant optician chains in Germany, Fielmann and Apollo, and showing that buying glasses on the Internet can work just as well as in brick-and-mortar stores. Last year, the company increased its sales disproportionately to 164 million euros (plus 18 percent), while Fielmann’s revenues fell by six percent to 1.4 billion euros.

More than 40 own branches

At the European level, revenue in the eyewear market has even fallen by 13 percent. In the first quarter of 2021, Mister Spex is also reporting “sustained momentum” with sales growth of 27 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021. In addition, Mister Spex achieved a positive operating result of seven million euros last year. Despite the strong growth on the Internet, Mister Spex has opened more and more stationary branches in recent years. The company now operates 42 branches of its own in Germany, Austria and Sweden. The managing director Mirko Caspar told the “Handelsblatt” that in the long term half of the sales should be generated in the branches. The figures showed that the combination of online shop, own stores and 400 partner opticians enabled rapid and extensive growth.