Supermarket group Ahold Delhaize will not be listing online store bol.com this year after all. End last year the company announced that it wanted to go public with a limited number of bol.com shares. The proceeds would pay for further investments in the site.
According to the parent company of Albert Heijn, the circumstances are currently unfavorable for such a step. E-commerce businesses are no longer growing as rapidly as they were during the heyday of corona lockdowns, when brick-and-mortar stores were closed or faced with other restrictions. Online shops are also less attractive investments due to rising inflation and low consumer confidence, because people are less inclined to shop extensively.
Ahold Delhaize now says it is opting for a growth path of bol.com that requires less substantial investments. The group says it will again make a decision about the future of the webshop if market conditions are more favourable.
Corona crisis
According to the original plans, announced during an investor day on November 15, 2021, it would be a minority share of the webshop that was floated on the stock exchange by Ahold. CEO Frans Muller then announced that Ahold Delhaize wants to keep a ‘significant controlling interest’ in bol.com. At the time, the parent company thought that bol.com, which had an annual turnover of 5.5 billion euros, could grow significantly in the coming years – even doubling by 2025, partly due to the increased online shopping due to the corona crisis. “We think that’s permanent,” Muller said at the time.
In October 2021, bol.com competitor Coolblue canceled the intended IPO, because the proceeds would not yield what the owners had in mind.
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