Call off the search.
Finally someone has said they are backing the flotation of Webvan 2.0.
Unsurprisingly it is one of those overseas investors who apparently gave the company such a totally, like, AMAZING reception in recent meetings.
The man in question is Dr Josef Schuster, founder of something called IPOX Schuster, an “independent, research-driven financial services firm specializing in financial products design related to global IPOs and spin-offs”.
Sadly we can’t find a picture (yet). But reader mc24_7 has.
Anyway, here’s what the good Dr, who has applied to buy shares, had to say about Webvan 2.0 in an interview with MarketWatch. And check out the Goldman line — it sums things up quiet nicely:
Schuster thinks perhaps the critics are being a bit harsh with Ocado, which he notes has been in business for some time now, with 3,000 employees. “They grew this business from nothing practically and are in an expanding part of the U.K. retail market now. Fundamentally, it’s an interesting story in terms of activities online and retailing space, in terms of associations with strong partners such as Waitrose.”
“It’s also interesting that they were able to maintain and grow their presence in a quite competitive market. They have 14% to 15% of the market share in online sales, and that’s quite good in itself,” he said. “Fundamentally, that’s power to the concept and obviously, also in regards to their ambitions to broaden their activities from pure online growth to baby food, furniture, an online department store, probably going abroad as well.”
And here is the killer line:
That was kind of a different time and the valuation is much different to Ocado,” said Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster LLC, a Chicago-based financial-services firm specializing in IPO products, who has applied to buy shares of the stock. “Overall, the founders are [from] Goldman Sachs so they know how to sell the story and make this an IPO event.”
Indeed they do, as Francis Gaskins, president of IPODesktop.com, reflects in the same MarketWatch piece:
I think Goldman is going to try and generate the typical ‘Goldman’ buzz that so far this year has pretty much fallen flat for IPO investors in the aftermarket,” he said. “It looks like Ocado is the ‘son of Webvan’ and that the Goldman sponsors may not have fully remembered the ‘Webvan’ experience where investor bankers were trying to trying to value Webvan around $4 billion.”
Anyway, it is really very good news that somebody is prepared to back the Webvan 2.0 IPO. After all, it would be a pity if the company didn’t list and we didn’t get the chance to chart its rise and, err, fall.
And note the good Doctor is only giving Webvan 2.0 a year to proce itself:
Schuster said he would give the company about nine to 12 months to show a profit and also wants to see the company announcing deals to justify the funds raised before making any adjustments to his IPO portfolio. For those reasons, he is not overweighting the stock, which he said is high-beta play, much like U.S.-based Tesla
Update: Some more information on Schuster (H/T mc24_7).
A quick biography:
Dr. Schuster is the chief architect of the IPOX® Indexes, an index series which encompasses a technology allowing for asset-allocation focused exposure into global IPO’s and spin-offs. With more than USD 3.0bn benchmarked since inception in August 2004, IPOX has become an alternative growth benchmark for many of the leading financial products sponsors around the world. B
Before starting IPOX, Josef Schuster pursued his academic work on IPO’s in the Financial Markets Group (FMG) at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he completed his MSc and PhD. Between 1996 and 2003, he was also a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) specializing in equity index derivates trading.
And a picture:
Related links:
This time it’s different – FT Alphaville
Ocadon’t – FT Alphaville
Re: Flotation - FT Alphaville
Reverse engineering Ocado’s valuation – FT Alphaville