Boxed goes public

Non-membership, online wholesaler with the Prince & Spring private brand made the move following recent merger.

Executive Editor

12/17/2021

Following its merger with Seven Oaks Acquisition, where plans to go public began, Boxed has made it official.

The New York-based online warehouse retailer with a strong private brand in Prince & Spring launched eight years ago, growing to become a company with a combined equity value estimated at nearly $900 million, and the newly structured company was expected to receive $334 million in net cash proceeds.

The company made a strong push into private brands developing its Prince & Spring brand from scratch, as profiled by Store Brands in the July 2019 issue.

With going public, Boxed Inc.’s common stock and warrants are now available for trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the new ticker symbol BOXD.

The retailer differentiates by selling bulk goods online without the need of a membership.

This service is powered by the company’s own purpose-built storefront, marketplace, analytics, fulfillment, advertising and robotics technologies. The wholesale e-retailer further enables e-commerce through its Software & Services business, which offers customers in need of an enterprise-level e-commerce platform access to its end-to-end technology.

One day after the completion of the Seven Oaks merger, Boxed revealed that it will further integrate with Google Cloud. As Boxed continues to scale its Software & Services business, deepening its relationship with Google Cloud will enhance its operational capabilities, deliver more value to its enterprise clients, and source new customers for its growing stable of Software & Services clients. As part of this updated licensing agreement, Boxed said that it will be able to make use of Google Cloud’s advanced cloud-computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to unlock new value and redefine the future of consumer brand relationships in e-commerce.

Also Boxed closed its acquisition of substantially all of the assets and operations of MaxDelivery, one of New York’s first on-demand grocery delivery services. The acquisition marks Boxed’s entry point into the rapid grocery delivery space and is expected to broaden the company’s capabilities in micro dark-store fulfillment and fresh grocery supply chain. MaxDelivery will also become a client of Boxed’s Software & Services business, adopting its proprietary commerce technology to help enable scalability of its operations, and expansion into additional markets over time.

Meanwhile, as part of its merger, Boxed has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission its current report on Form 8-K (Super 8-K). Boxed reported its financial results as of and for the nine months ended Sept. 30. The company noted that its net revenue increased 20% year over year, from $40.9 million in the third quarter of 2020 to $49.0 million in the third quarter of 2021, bolstered by $10.8 million of Software & Services revenue. Boxed also reached a gross margin of 25.8% in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of 890 basis points from 16.9% in the third quarter of 2020.