THG shares rise after founder Moulding says he regrets London IPO

By Joice Alves

LONDON (Reuters) -Shares in online retail platform THG climbed 5.7% on Monday after chief executive Matt Moulding said he regretted floating the company, prompting speculation it could delist after a sharp slide in its stock price.

The Times quoted an interview with Moulding at The GQ Heroes Conference saying he wished he had floated the company in New York and that listing in London has “just sucked from start to finish”.

“We do have other options,” Moulding said, according to the newspaper.

He also compared short sellers to bank robbers, adding THG shares had suffered from a “pretty aggressive short attack”.

THG, whose shares pared some of the early gains and were up 4% by 1032 GMT, declined a request from Reuters to comment on the interview on Monday.

THG shares, which listed in London last year, have fallen about 70% in two months. The Manchester-based company, previously known as The Hut Group, owns beauty retailer Lookfantastic and supplements firm Myprotein.

In the latest sign of investor discontent THG’s second-largest shareholder BlackRock Inc sold nearly half its stake in the company at a 10% discount last week.

The sale followed a rocky month for THG in which its share price sank 35% in a single day after a poorly received investor presentation that focused on its technology platform Ingenuity, which sells e-commerce software to other companies.

THG has announced changes to its board and published growth figures for its Ingenuity technology unit in an effort to reassure investors.

(Reporting by Joice Alves, additional reporting by Sachin RavikumarEditing by Rachel Armstrong and Kirsten Donovan)