Moonpig is a key player in the UK personalised greetings card market. It also operates across Australia and the US, as well as Greetz in the Netherlands.
It began as an online card retailer but has expanded into card-attached gifting, including flowers and balloons, and personalised merchandise such as mugs and smartphone covers.
Moonpig acquired Red Letter Days and Buyagift in mid-2022, as it branched into the experiences-as-gifts business.
The business was founded in 1999 and sold to Photobox in 2011 for around £120m before Moonpig Group was acquired by Exponent Private Equity in 2016.
When Moonpig was admitted to the London Stock Exchange in 2021, Exponent retained a significant shareholding but as of mid-2022 held 12% of the issued ordinary share capital of the company and was no longer a controlling shareholder of the company. Since Moonpig’s stock market listing, investors including Exponent, have been reducing their stake in Moonpig.
Moonpig began trading on the London Stock Exchange in February 2021 with a market capitalisation of £1.2bn. The retailer had announced its intention to float the previous month after strong lockdown trading to “further raise the profile of the company”, as well as “provide it with a platform for continued growth”.
The Moonpig Group is headed up by chief executive Nickyl Raithatha.
It has been exploring greater use of cloud platforms in its supply chain and improving customer communication through segmentation and personalisation, while also investing heavily in mobile.
Moonpig has also been using AI for personalisation of the website and promotions, as well as for consumer’s customised messages in greeting cards.
Moonpig sales grew 6.6% year on year to £341.1m for the year to 30 April 2024 (FY2023), while pre-tax profit came in at £46.4m, with a margin of 13.6%.
Profitability is underpinned by Moonpig’s vertically integrated business model, which has allowed it to develop its entire production and management IT systems. In late 2020, it completed its three-year technology and data replatforming and during FY2022, it also launched in Ireland and successfully migrated Greetz onto the Moonpig technology platform.
