The 30-year-old founder of LadBible has a net worth of more than £200m after his business listed on the London Stock Exchange today.
Alexander (Solly) Solomou made £50m in cash from share sales today, and he retains a 42% stake in the listed LBG Media.
LBG, which operates several youth-orientated media brands including SportBible, UNILAD and GamingBible, completed its initial public offering (IPO) on the LSE’s Alternative Investment Market (Aim) this morning.
Its shares listed at £1.75, valuing the company at £360m. By the end of the day, LBG’s share price had risen to £2, and the company’s market capitalisation was around £411m.
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Solomou’s 85.7m shares, accounting for a 41.7% stake, are currently worth more than £170m.
LBG Media’s listing comes after its US rival, Buzzfeed, went public on the US stock market last week via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
BuzzFeed has had a rocky start to stock market life. The company’s share price fell 39% in its first week on the market. According to CNBC, its current market capitalisation is around $920m (about £700m).
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Admission documents filed by LBG show the company generated revenues of £30.2m last year and adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of £5.3m.
The company said its revenues in the first half of this year hit £23m. Press Gazette understands the market expects LBG to hit revenues of £52m this year, up more than 70% year on year, and report an adjusted Ebitda of more than £16m.
Announcing LBG’s listing this morning, Solly Solomou and Arian Kalantari, the company’s co-founders, said: “Today is an important day for everyone at LBG Media and we’d like to thank our incredibly hard-working and talented team for helping us achieve this milestone. Back when we founded the company in 2012 we were looking for a way to engage with young people just like us and we are incredibly proud that what we created back then now has over 262 million social media followers worldwide.
“We remain committed to creating exciting, engaging and socially responsible content that gives the youth generation a voice and appropriately represents their interests.
“The reception we have received from investors has been very positive and we are excited to be embarking on the next of phase of our growth story with the listing on AIM providing us with the platform to continue to grow well into the future.”
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