Farfetch Files for IPO

LONDON — Farfetch is headed to Wall Street.

The London-based $1 billion-plus online retail platform on Monday filed its long-awaited registration statement for an initial public offering of class A shares. Details of the price and number of shares remain vague.

“The size of the opportunity is far larger than what Farfetch is today. The luxury industry has been consistently growing at a 6 percent compound rate for the past 20 years, which means – if we assume the same pace of growth – in the next 10 years, it could reach well over $450 billion,” said founder José Neves in a statement. “By then, 25 percent of sales are expected to happen online. We believe the 75 percent of sales still happening in physical retail in 10 years will be revolutionized by digital technologies,” he added. “In fact, the distinction between offline and online retail will vanish, as consumers will not be able to tell where one started and the other finished. This is what we call at Farfetch ‘Augmented Retail.'”

Farfetch has selected Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC to be its primary underwriters. Credit Suisse Securities LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc and BNP Paribas Securities Corp have also been chosen to work on the IPO.

The company’s IPO has been hotly anticipated for the past two years with reports citing that the retail platform is aiming for a valuation as high as 6 billion dollars.

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