Cult Beauty reportedly up for sale

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 10, 2019

Online beauty business Cult Beauty is reportedly eyeing a sale with the fast-growing firm having hired bankers to advise it.

JP Morgan is believed to be on board to advise founders Alexia Inge, a former model, and Jessica DeLuca, although no formal sale process has yet started.

The plan was reported by Sky News, which said that a sale might not happen until next year and that rather than an outright disposal of the business, the founders and their external backers could decide to sell a percentage only.

The retailer sells a variety of on-trend brands including Drunk Elephant (which is in the news itself as it too changes hands), GHD, Becca, Hourglass, Nars, Morphe, Huda Beauty and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.

With sales having almost doubled in the year to May 2018 to reach £68.9 million, analysts believe the purchase price could be in the hundreds of millions, despite operating profits for that year having been just about flat at £3.7 million.

It’s unclear exactly what the results will be for the year to May 2019, but the company has said that its growth is continuing, although at a slower pace than the rapid acceleration in the previous 12 months. 

Neither the company nor JP Morgan have commented on the Sky story.