(News Bulletin 247) – Vente-unique.com announced this Thursday the return online of the Habitat.fr site, almost six months after the judicial liquidation of the brand founded in 1964. This is a unique case had recalled TP ICAP Midcap in a note published at the beginning of the week.

The Habitat brand is opening a new page in its history. The furniture brand founded in 1964 will rise from its ashes, but this time only online, after having lowered the curtain in the last days of 2023.

The Bobigny court placed Habitat in liquidation on December 28. This sealed the fate of the brand founded in 1964 and which employed 400 people.

And it is the listed company Vente-unique.com which was responsible for relaunching this iconic brand. It must be said that the company led by Sacha Vigna knew where it was going since its subsidiary Distri Service managed Habitat’s logistics between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023.

On April 28 on BFM Business, the general director of Vente-unique.com, Sacha Vigna, judged that Habitat “was a brand in the daily life of the French”, and recalled that it would be relaunched online and “modernized”. Vente-unique.com will restore “all its luster” to the brand, added the manager.

Then on May 11, Vente-unique.com indicated that the Habitat.fr site should “become a merchant again in June”, a few weeks after announcing that it intended to “reactivate” Habitat.fr “before summer 2024” .

A priority for injured customers

From this Thursday, June 13, customers can once again purchase Habitat brand products on the Habitat.fr website and have them delivered anywhere in France. More than 1,500 references are currently available for sale. “These are exclusively Habitat brand products from the latest collection, including iconic products, mainly sofas, furniture and decorative items,” explains Vente-unique.com.

Priority was given to the 9,000 customers harmed by the judicial liquidation, who are invited until June 30 to fill out a form, in order to receive “a Habitat voucher proposal”.

Vente-unique.com indicates that it has “provided a response to the first files of these customers”. Each customer concerned thus received a Habitat voucher proposal, “of a significant amount, adapted to each particular case and specified by name to each person by e-mail”, explained the company, which specifies that these vouchers are valid for 2 months and “usable on the entire Habitat.fr site”.

A unique case

The takeover of Habitat by Vente-unique.com is a unique movement in the world of specialized distribution, reported TP ICAP Midcap in a note published at the beginning of the week.

“If the acquisition of a digital brand by brick and mortar players (physical, Editor’s note) is not rare (Home 24, Made.com, etc.), the opposite is much less common. (…) Spartoo had also tried with André, without success… Here, the situation is different since Vente-unique.com only takes over the brand, without physical assets, which makes it a unique case according to us”, notes Florent Thy-tine, head of equity research at TP ICAP Midcap.

“The takeover of a physical brand by a digital player seems much less common to us,” continues the specialist. Vente-unique.com is therefore embarking on a “real challenge”, insofar as the market will be attentive to its ability to transform customers used to buying in stores into customers who will shop online.

Financially, TP ICAP Midcap estimates that “in the event of failure, the takeover of Habitat could cost it around ten million euros over 5 years, or 2 million euros per year”. However, this risk-taking will not be “that significant” for the financial intermediary given the fundamentals and financial structure of Vente-unique.com.

If the group manages to overcome this challenge, the upside potential (of an increase in the stock, editor’s note) is “significant” for Florent Thy-tine. But the analyst uses a deliberately very conservative scenario, with a positive impact on the price target estimated at 0.5 euros, in the event of a successful takeover of Habitat.

“By opting for a more aggressive scenario, the impact on the price target could be positive by 6.5 euros. Conversely, in the event of failure, the downside (bearish potential) is only -0.9 euros (the stock had lost 1 euro on the day of the announcement),” he recalls.

Beyond the takeover of Habitat, the research office reports a flow of favorable news in the short term since it expects “well-oriented” half-year results. This confidence is supported by the half-yearly turnover published on May 15, which showed an increase of 11%. According to TP ICAP Midcap, this growth should allow “an increase in profitability thanks to the group’s natural leverage”, and therefore expects an operating margin of around 10%, i.e. an increase by compared to the 8.4% achieved in the first half of 2022/2023.

In this context, TP ICAP Midcap believes that there is still potential for Vente-unique.com shares. Thus, it renews its purchase recommendation while raising its price target to 18 euros compared to 17.5 euros previously.

On the Paris Stock Exchange, Vente-unique.com reacted little to the revival of the Habitat brand’s e-commerce site, with a stock that was stable at 15.85 euros this Thursday around 11:45 a.m.