Quadrant Private Equity has mandated investment banks UBS and Jarden to float its online auctions house, Grays Online.

Sources said Shaw and Partners had been tapped as co-manager, and a deal was expected to get under way next year.

The mandates come after Quadrant sent a formal request for proposal to Australian investment banks in recent weeks, seeking their views on who could be interested in buying Grays and at what price.

Quadrant houses the business in its Quadrant Growth Fund, the same fund that had Adore Beauty, which floated earlier this year in a deal overseen by Morgan Stanley and UBS.

Grays is an online retail business that sells a diverse range of products – including heavy machinery, real estate, boats, cars, wine, home appliances and electronics – and notches about 120,000 product sales a month.

It sold goods worth $800 million in the past 12 months, and has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Perth and Wagga Wagga. Grays oversees about 50,000 square metres of warehouse space for its inventory, and 160,000 square metres of yard space.

The online auctions house’s engine room is its used car business, and it sold 40,000 cars last year compared to 5000 in 2015.

Quadrant bought Grays and AreYouSelling from ASX-listed Eclipx in July last year for $60 million, the first acquisition from its $400 million growth fund. The price tag represented a big haircut for Eclipx, which paid $179 million for the business in 2017.

Article source: AFR, 17 December 2020.