Westfield shopper data platform spinout under pressure
Steven Lowy’s shopper data platform OneMarket is under pressure from shareholders after burning through cash (Sydney Morning Herald)
Key points
- OneMarket share price has halved since listing on ASX
- Company lost $92m in 15 months to 31 March 2019
- Burned $56m in cash
- “The issue is that is it burning cash at a big rate and may have to have a capital raising at some point and that has spooked some of the market” – unnamed fund manager
- OneMarket says it has sufficient funds ($120.5m) to last until late 2021
- New CEO has halved rate of cash burn
- While losing Nordstrom business, gained Pandora A/S in March and Marks & Spencer in April
The promise of bringing together on and offline customer data, communications and advertising solutions with closed loop attribution should attract retailers. The reality of building a business to enable retailers to take on the likes of Amazon - and an increasing number of others - is that it is expensive and takes a long time to build a head of steam, let alone a profit.
The company says it has enough money to keep attempting to crack the conundrum for at least another two years, and claims it has more than 30 retail customers, 100 brands and that its platform is already crunching data on millions of customers, per results filed last month.
But others think the company might be better off in private hands. Deep value investors building up strong stakes in the company also have an eye on upside, in whatever form that may take.
