On October 4, Manish Chandra held the
following interview with Yahoo! Finance Live:
Brian Sozzi: Poshmark has agreed to sell itself for
$1.2 billion to South Korean internet company Naver. Shares
are rocketing higher here in the early going, let’s get right into
this deal with Poshmark Founder and CEO Manish Chandra. Manish,
always good to see you here, big day I’m sure for you and the team.
Why did you choose now to make this transaction?
Manish Chandra: Well, it’s a great win for our shareholders,
it’s a great win for our employees, and ultimately it’s a very good
win for our community. By bringing Poshmark and Naver together, we
actually invest in the right way, we accelerate growth and
ultimately build a much bigger and much more global Poshmark.
There’s a lot of synergies, a lot of complementary strengths, and
we’re excited about the future of Poshmark.
Brian Sozzi: Manish, did you run an active sales process
here, or was this something you were seeking more to Naver approach
you?
Manish Chandra: Yeah, no we were not seeking. Naver
approached us. We initially spent time looking at our deep
strategic partnership with them and at some point it made more
sense to come together as one company, and that’s the action we
took over the last few months.
Julie Hyman: Manish, I have to ask. It’s Julie here. You
know, you came public at $42 in early 2021, the stock has gone
down, you, start to see a little bit of a recovery lately. When
Sozzi asked about timing, just to build on that, why not wait for
your stock price to hopefully recover a little more before doing a
sale?
Manish Chandra: Yeah, you know, this this deal represents
roughly a 48% percent premium over a 90-day VWAP and a 34% premium over a
30-day VWAP, so when we
look at it sort of from a premium perspective, it’s actually a very
attractive deal. You know, as we look at the business, we’ve looked
at it from a long-term perspective, you know stock market is
volatile, we sort of have seen the market being extremely volatile
over the next year and a half. But looking at sort of from our
shareholders perspective, we felt like it was a good ROI. From a
business perspective, it’s the right thing to do. We are starting
to invest in many of the technologies that we have complimentary
overlap, including livestreaming, some of the search discovery
technologies as well as global expansion. So from a timing
perspective, it really did make sense to bring the two businesses
together now.
Brad Smith: Manish, it’s really interesting in the resale
market right now, it seems like there’s a flood of sellers that are
coming into the market because they’re looking to perhaps also just
sure up some of their own cash, especially considering the
consortium of consumers that you go after typically for Poshmark.
But even as you think about the buyer part of that component too,
what are actual sales, looking like between the number of buyers
and sellers and transactions, that merchandise volume that has
actually taken place and being exchanged on the platform right now
considering the consumer discretionary headwinds that we’ve seen
over the summer and could persist?
Manish Chandra: Yeah, you know the re-commerce economy, particularly the
Poshmark economy, is pretty unique in the sense that buyers are
sellers and sellers are buyers. There’s a huge overlap between the
two components. And so a lot of times people are recirculating
their closet, and that creates a very different kind of economy
than other fashion places. The second thing is because we have an
asset-light model, the merchandising on Poshmark is extremely
dynamic. So, what happens is if a certain trend is