Moonpig is a key player in the UK personalised greetings card market. It also operates across the Australia and the US, as well as Greetz in the Netherlands, and describes itself as “an international, cross-channel gifting platform”.
It began as an online card retailer but has expanded into card-attached gifting, including flowers and balloons, as well as a range of personalised merchandise such as mugs and smartphone covers.
In mid 2022, Moonpig acquired Red Letter Days and Buyagift as branched into the experiences-as-gifts business. During the year it also launched in Ireland and successfully migrated Greetz onto the Moonpig technology platform.
The business was founded in 1999 and sold to Photobox in 2011 for around £120m. The Moonpig Group was acquired by Exponent Private Equity in 2016. When Moonpig was admitted to the London Stock Exchange in 2021, Exponent retained a significant shareholding and held 12% of the issued ordinary share capital of the company as of mid 2022, but was no longer a controlling shareholder of the company. The Moonpig group is headed up by chief executive Nickyl Raithatha.
It has been exploring greater use of cloud platforms in its supply chain and improving customer communication through greater segmentation and personalisation, while also investing heavily in mobile.
Moonpig sales grew 5.2% year on year to £320.1m in the 2022 financial year to 30 April 2023, while pre-tax profit came in at £34.9m, with a margin of 10.9%.
Profitability is underpinned by Moonpig’s vertically integrated business model, which has allowed it to develop its entire production and management IT systems. In late 2020, it completed its three-year technology and data replatforming.
Moonpig began trading on the London Stock Exchange in February 2021 with a market capitalisation of £1.2bn. The retailer had announced its intention to float the previous month after strong lockdown trading to “further raise the profile of the company”, as well as “provide it with a platform for continued growth”.
Innovation rating: 3.5
