Asos is moving its stock listing to the London stock exchange’s main market in a long anticipated shift to attract more investors as demand for party dresses and formal wear fuels sales. The company is naming Patrick Kennedy, chairman of Bank of Ireland and former chief executive of Paddy Power, to its board as an independent director.
Asos shares lost half their value in 2021 even as online shopping boomed. The retailer, like rivals Boohoo and H&M, has been hard hit by logistics problems that have made moving stock around the world more difficult since the pandemic and Brexit. Rising returns from customers, a big cost for online retailers, have also dented Asos’s performance.
The move is “another positive step for the share price,” RBC Europe. analyst Sherri Malek wrote in a note.Asos shares have surged more than 11,000 per cent since the retailer first went public in October 2001, and its current market value of £2.3 billion is among the biggest for companies listed on AIM. The stock closed at 2,259 pence on Wednesday, compared with its listing price of just 20 pence.