Huge sofa chain with 100 stores SOLD in £100m deal
A HUGE UK sofa chain has been sold to a new owner in a deal worth £100million.
The company, which has more than 100 stores across the UK, is being taken over by an Italian furniture retailer.
ScS has been snapped up by Poltronesofa, which already has hundreds of locations across the rest of Europe.
The deal is its first foray into the UK market.
Companies which want to expand often buy up other companies, instead of starting from scratch opening new shops.
Poltronesofa has around 300 stores across Europe, including Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Cyprus and Malta.
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ScS has 100 locations in the UK and a website. Earlier this year, the company bought up Snug from administration.
Snug was a sofa-in-a-box company, where shoppers could buy online and get it delivered to their homes and assemble themselves.
It was one of several 'sofa disruptors' that looked to avoid having costlier showrooms, but was bought up by ScS after going into administration.
The deal today includes the Snug brand, which will now also be owned by Poltronesofa.
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SCS was founded in Sunderland in 1894 and is one of the UK biggest sofa shops employing over 1,800 people. It also sells other furniture and flooring,
Most recently company was publicly listed, which means that shares in the company are traded on a stock exchange and can be bought by anyone.
Previously SCS was listed company from 1997, before being taken private in a deal with Sun Capital Partners in 2008.
It returned to the stock market in 2015.
Poltronesofa will pay 280p a share, including a 10p dividend, valuing ScS at £99.4 million.
The deal is a 66% premium on Monday’s closing price.
Alan Smith, non-executive chair of ScS, said: “Poltronesofa, based in Italy, is a pan-European sofa retailer that has been successfully pursuing international expansion and ScS, with UK operations, is the next juncture of that strategy.
“The ScS board believes Poltronesofa will bring significant benefits to ScS through its broad industry expertise in addition to providing the necessary capital that would accelerate our current strategy, albeit in a private rather than public sphere.”
Poltronesofa said the deal fits in with its aims to continue growing across Europe.
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Chief executive Renzo Ricci said: “As the next step of Poltronesofa’s pan-European expansion, the acquisition represents the best opportunity for Poltronesofa to enter the United Kingdom market of upholstery products.”
He added it will help ScS “realise its full growth potential”.