Rocket Internet names new chairman, denies dispute

[December 16, 2015]  By Emma Thomasson

BERLIN (Reuters) - German ecommerce firm Rocket Internet has denied a dispute with major investor Sweden's Kinnevik as it put a new chairman in charge of its supervisory board, replacing Kinnevik's chief executive.

Rocket Internet said it had promoted former ProSieben digital media manager Marcus Englert to chairman of the supervisory board from his deputy position, while Kinnevik's CEO Lorenzo Grabau will continue to serve as a member of the board.

A Rocket Internet spokesman denied a report in monthly Manager Magazin that the move came after Kinnevik blocked plans to list recipe ingredients delivery start-up HelloFresh a day before Rocket was due to publish a prospectus in November.

A source close to the company told Reuters there had been disagreements on the supervisory board about Rocket's strategy.

Founded by brothers Oliver, Alexander and Marc Samwer in 2007, Rocket has set up dozens of ecommerce sites, aiming to replicate the success of Amazon and Alibaba in new markets in Africa, Latin America and Russia.

However, its shares have slumped 43 percent this year after it took a new direction by splashing out on online food takeaway businesses in developed markets, prompting it to seek more funds.

The stock was down 2.9 percent at 28.27 euros by 1032 GMT, well below the 42.50 euro offer price in Rocket's initial public offering (IPO) last October.

A spokeswoman for Kinnevik, which owns a 13 percent stake in Rocket as well as significant stakes in many of its major start-ups, declined to comment.

The Berlin-based group, Europe's largest Internet company, said in September it hopes to list at least one of its start-ups within 18 months and expects three of the start-ups to break even by the end of 2017.

Chief Executive Oliver Samwer reiterated those objectives on Wednesday, although he declined to comment on which company was likely to be listed first, saying that an IPO of HelloFresh would only come when the markets and company were ready.

Rocket said the average weighted net revenue of its leading start-ups that it dubs its "proven winners" rose 120 percent in the first nine months to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion), compared with 142 percent growth for the first half.

The average margin on core earnings or EBITDA for the proven winners, all of which are still heavily loss-making, rose 4 percentage points in the nine months compared with a year ago.

Samwer told journalists he expected a large number of the companies to make a significant improvement in their profitability in 2016.

Rocket Internet said its portfolio value was stable at 6.1 billion euros, as it had not sealed any major funding rounds for its companies, adding it continued to evaluate private funding and other alternatives for its companies.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner, Nadine Schimroszik and Helena Soderpalm; Editing by David Holmes and Elaine Hardcastle)

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