AO World plc has completed the acquisition of specialist photography retailer, Jessops.
In a trading update, the Bolton-based ecommerce group confirmed that it had bought Jessops from entrepreneur, Peter Jones CBE.
This came following a “strong financial and operational performance” by AO over the last 6 months, with group revenue expected to be up 5.5% year on year and profits before tax expected to be up by over 20% to around £21.5m.
It anticipated by the end of the period it would have more than “£200m of liquidity headroom.”
The acquisition of Jessops comes through “existing cash resources” and the group explained that it supported a strategy of expanding into adjacent categories.
Jessops’ Camera Jungle recommerce business is described as “highly complementary” to its musicMagpie operations.
“It has been a busy first half of the year as we both buy and build more category capability, give more reasons to be an AO member and continue to build growth engines for the future. To that end I am delighted to welcome Jessops into the AO family and look forward to growing the existing business as well as integrating the category into the wider AO business,” said John Roberts, AO’s Founder and CEO.
“There continues to be a lot of uncertainty in the world but we look forward to heading into peak trading with confidence and momentum behind us.”
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AO said that it expected to grow the Jessops business over the next 12 months as it leveraged its “scale, traffic and operational expertise to drive efficiencies.”
Jessops was established in 1935 by Frank Jessop in Leicester, but in more recent history it’s had a difficult time – calling in administrators 3 times in the last 20 years.
Since 2013 it has had a period of stability, when it was bought out of administration by Peter Jones’ PJ Investment Group, to run primarily as an online retailer, meaning almost 200 stores closed.
Jones’ team did return the brand to the high street, at one point, opening up to 1 store a week, including what was the largest photographic imaging store in Europe, in Birmingham.
