INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Marley Spoon, the meal kit subscription service that competes with the likes of Blue Apron and HelloFresh, has filed for an IPO in Australia
The Berlin-headquartered company is aiming to raise 70 million Australian Dollars (approximately $53m), and has chosen to list on the
Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in part because Australia is one of its strongest markets
It also operates in the United States and in four European countries, including Germany.The IPO, which should complete in early July, will
give Marley Spoon an indicative market capitalisation of ~200 million AUD (~$152m) on listing, priced at $1.42 per CDI
The majority of capital to be raised has already been placed with various public market institutional investors in Australia and a number of
other eligible jurisdictions, while a minority will be made available to Australian resident investors via an allocation from their broker
sees it deliver pre-portioned fresh ingredients for each recipe offered, so as to make it easier, more inspiring, and more cost-effective to
Spoon has a partnership with Martha Stewart under the Martha Marley Spoon brand
More recently, the company launched a cheaper, more mass-market offering called Dinnerly in a bid to make meal-kits less price sensitive and
incentives are currently offered
In terms of paid marketing, Facebook trumps Google, since nobody really searches for recipe kits online and awareness that the product
category exists at all is and remains the main challenge.To that end, Marley Spoon claims 110,000 active customers across Australia, the
United States , Austria, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands (about a tenth the size of HelloFresh in the United States ), and has
forecast revenue of 93 million Euros this year.Regards the decision to list on ASX, as of March this year, Australia represented 37 per cent
of its revenue, which is slightly ahead of the United States and Europe
Siegel also tells me Marley Spoon is already break-even in Australia and is expected to be profitable in the country in the second half of
the 2018 financial year, a pattern the company is aiming to replicate in other markets.Asked why Marley Spoon has shunned further VC or
Spoon enough time to grow the company at the same pace as the market for online grocery develops, rather than spending excessively on
