Dark Angel star Jessica Alba's beauty company is making big waves in the stock exchange game - boosting nearly 50% in its recent trading debut. Honest Company dived head first into Wall Street with initial public offerings being sold for $16 per share. As the tides of trading progressed, the company walked away with $412.8 million!
According to Bloomberg, "The shares were up 43% to $22.80 at 2:36 p.m in New York trading, giving the company a market value of about $2.1 billion." This was all attributed to the 6.5 million investors - among them being L Catterton and Lightspeed Venture Partners - with Morgan Stanley, Jefferies and J.P. Morgan being highly involved with the underwriting of the offer. It was the private equity giant L Catterton who made the heftiest investment. They sold 15.5 million shares for $247.2 million, as reported by Yahoo! Finance. The eminence amount of faith in Alba's brand put Honest Company in direct competition with other major companies with similar demographics, like Revlon.
"I have three kids, I would say Honest is my fourth kid," Alba tells Bloomberg, "You should have products that you can trust and across the board we hit on all of those things that are very important to not just the millennials, but the younger generation that are driving really the consumer’s behavior to a more conscious life"
Alba founded Honest Company in 2011 with the notion that 'there shouldn't have to be a choice between products that work and products that are good for the consumer'. Among normal wellness products like natural skincare products and cosmetics, the shop also sells diapers and other baby related goods. Her company was breed from her visceral concerns for the amount of harmful chemicals that permeate American production. She even went as far as to visit Capitol Hill in 2015 and urge lawmakers to do more about the epidemic of toxins in what we buy.
Unlike most celebrity founded companies, Alba has 191 employees helping her business run smoothly. Notably, Honest enlisted the expertise of Nick Vlahos to be the company's CEO. Vlahos has an outstanding track record in this field of work as he'd formerly worked for The Clorox Company within the same position. He was also the Vice President and Global General Manager of skincare company Burt's Bees. So, needless to say, it looks like Alba's fourth baby is in good hands.
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Sources: ABC News, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo! Finance