Now it’s going public: Oatly is worth ten billion dollars


Now it’s going on the stock exchange
Oatly is worth ten billion dollars

Many people prefer an oat drink instead of milk from the udder. Oatly benefits from this – the Malmö-based company is facing a billion-dollar IPO. However, the Swedes do not earn any money.

The Swedish oat drink manufacturer Oatly is valued at ten billion dollars when it goes public on the US technology exchange Nasdaq. The company said the price per share was $ 17 – and thus at the upper end of the subscription range. Oatly doesn’t make money. Last year the company made a loss of $ 60 million and in 2019 of $ 36 million.

Oatly and some of its shareholders will raise up to $ 1.65 billion on the issue, of which 1.1 billion will go to the company itself. Oatly’s investors include former Starbucks boss Howard Schultz, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, actress Natalie Portman and rapper Jay Z.

Oatly is benefiting from the trend towards healthy and vegan nutrition and is experiencing a massive increase in value with the IPO. In the last, $ 200 million financing round in July 2020, which was largely lifted by financial investor Blackstone, the company was valued at around $ 2 billion.

Even after the IPO, Verlinvest, the holding company of the owner family of the brewery giant Anheuser-Busch InBev, remains the largest shareholder. It invested in Oatly in 2016 through a joint venture with the state-owned China Resources.

There is also oat ice cream

Oatly oat milk is particularly popular with vegans as a milk substitute because it is free from soy protein. Most recently, the Malmö-based company founded in 1994 by the brothers Rickard and Björn Öste teamed up with the Starbucks coffee chain, which wants to offer drinks and snacks based on Oatly oat products in its cafes in the USA.

Oatly also makes ice cream, yogurt, and oat spreads. The company had doubled its sales to $ 421 million last year. The group was founded in the 1990s and today sells its products in around 20 countries.

The successful issue offers the hoped-for support for the US stock market. Three IPOs canceled last week had fueled fears that the 15-month wave of successes in issues and placements could be coming to an end. Mortgage insurer Enact Holdings and hearing aid maker Hear.com had withdrawn their stock market plans. In Germany, too, the willingness of investors to accept IPOs decreased. The Oatly issue was organized by the investment banks Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse.

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