Mytheresa had agreed to buy the assets of longtime competitor Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP) from Richemont, in a deal that combines two leading names in the digital luxury space.
Post-sale, YNAP’s luxury division will be integrated into Mytheresa, resulting in one group with three storefronts: Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter, and YNAP’s male-oriented Mr Porter.
Mytheresa will run YNAP’s off-price divisions, Yoox and Outnet, separately from its luxury brands and will shut down YNAP’s white-label division, which had provided platforms for Richemont’s brands.
Richemont will receive no cash from the sale but will gain a 33% equity stake in the combined company, as well as a board seat. Mytheresa will inherit YNAP’s 555 million euro (approximately $610 million) cash position without taking on any debt. Richemont will provide a 100 million euro ($109 million) revolving credit facility to YNAP. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, which is expected in the first half of next year.
On a conference call following the announcement, Mytheresa CEO Michael Kliger said YNAP and Mytheresa have “highly differentiated and complementary offerings.
“The logic is to bring together the brands of luxury, but retain their distinct brand identities,” he said. “Mytheresa is fully focused on the high end. Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter have a broader portfolio of brands, focused on luxury but including the accessible part of luxury, including aspirational customers [and] emerging and new brands that don’t fall into our portfolio.”
Mytheresa plans to merge the luxury lines’ “infrastructure, which will allow us efficiencies and synergies,” Kliger said.
He said the off-price sites need to be separated from the luxury segment because they are “quite different businesses.
“What we believe is not working [at YNAP] is having an infrastructure that serves both these business at the same time and trying to create synergies between two different models, both of which are quite successful in their own right. If they are different business models, they need different infastructures.”
Kliger said that while the digital luxury business has experienced consolidation in recent years, Mytheresa “continues to see fantastic opportunities” in the sector.
“Most analysts expect a doubling in digital luxury until 2030,” he stated. “There is a huge opportunity to now create a player with huge growth, especially since other players have decided to exit the market.”
Richemont became sole owner of YNAP in 2018, three years after Net-a-Porter merged with the Milan-based Yoox Group. Since then, Richemont has been under constant pressure to sell the loss-making business. Last year, it scuttled a plan to sell YNAP to Farfetch, after the latter site was acquired by South Korean e-tailer Coupang.
Kliger noted that Richemont will simply be “a financial shareholder” in the new company and that “there are no operational ties as the result of this deal.”
Richemont said it will write down YNAP’s net assets by approximately 1.3 billion euros ($1.43 billion).
Top: Mytheresa’s headquarters in Munich, Germany (photo courtesy of Mytheresa)
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