Online shopping tycoon is set for huge windfall when his business floats on stock market

A shopping tycoon is set for a huge cash windfall after online retailer The Hut Group (THG) has revealed plans for a £4.5 billion listing on the London Stock Exchange.

Matthew Moulding started the company in 2004 and will be awarded shares worth £700million if the company’s valuation reaches £7.25 billion in the next two years, as reported by The Times.

The 48-year-old owns 20 per cent of the business which is best known for its MyProtein brand of fitness supplements.  

The Hut Group said it is looking to raise around £920 million through a share offering as it confirmed the intention to float.

It caps a remarkable transformation for Mr Moulding, who started working life as a potwasher at his local pub and describes his background as ‘typical working class’.

He grew up in Colne, a market town north of Burnley, his father a road worker laying tarmac and his mother a homemaker.  

Mr Moulding went to a state school, before studying industrial economics at Nottingham University.

Now, his family has a fortune of £600 million, with the tycoon tightly controlling his vast empire through his iPhone, working long hours and drinking 20 shots of coffee a day – though he finds time to holiday with his wife and four children in the Maldives and Dubai.

Mr Moulding also seems determined to maintain his links to the north, rarely travelling for business and encouraging potential investors to visit him in Manchester. 

On  a typical day, he wakes up at 6am and checks his messages on his iPhone, before starting working at 7am. 

He takes a mid-morning break to go to the gym – not missing a day of working out for several years. 

Mr Moulding has two 30-minute meetings throughout the day and is fuelled by coffee, before arriving home to his children. 

His company has attracted big name investors with Mr Moulding hailed for his business sense . 

‘Matt is one of the most phenomenal tech chief executives in Europe,’ Bernard Liautaud, Balderton’s managing partner and a board director at THG told the Times. ‘He combines an extremely ambitious vision with a relentless drive for execution.’ 

The company has rapidly expanded as shoppers increasingly turn online for health and lifestyle brands, with around 7,000 staff now employed by the Manchester-based group.

THG owns a variety of its own cosmetic brands – many of which it has acquired in recent years – but also sells third-party brands through e-commerce sites it operates, such as Glossybox.

In 2019, the company saw revenues jump by 24.5% year-on-year to £1.1 billion, with adjusted earnings before tax and interest of £111.3 million.

It told potential investors that its growth has accelerated recently as it saw revenues increase by 35.8% to £676 million for the six months to June 30.

The listing is to be one of the first major floats in London after the coronavirus pandemic halted the recovering IPO market.

Mr Moulding, chief executive officer and chairman of THG, said: ‘Our intention to float THG on the London Stock Exchange reflects the achievements of the past but also our strong belief in the significant potential for THG in the future.

‘THG has enjoyed strong growth since being founded in 2004, employing more than 7,000 people and establishing a track record of consistent delivery for our customers.

‘The brands we own today give us leading strategic positions in prestige beauty and nutrition, powered by Ingenuity, our differentiated proprietary direct-to-consumer e-commerce solution.’