WH Smith is to acquire InMotion, a North American airport-based retailer of digital travel accessories, for USD198 million (GBP155 million).
Established in 1998, InMotion operates a concession portfolio of 114 stores across 43 airports in the United States, with a presence in nine of the top ten, and 22 of the top 25 busiest US airports.
InMotion sells a range of digital accessories includes premium headphones and earbuds, travel accessories, mobile power, portable speakers and action cameras. In the calendar year to date, the company has delivered like-for-like sales growth of 13 per cent, following like-for-like growth of 12 per cent in calendar year 2017. For the financial year ending 31 December 2018, InMotion is expected to deliver sales of approximately USD166 million (GBP130 million), and EBITDA of approximately USD23 million (GBP18 million).
The deal will doubles the size of WH Smith’s international travel business.
Stephen Clarke, Group Chief Executive, WH Smith, says: “InMotion is a highly successful pure play travel retailer in the world’s largest travel retail market. The acquisition of InMotion is an exciting value creation opportunity for the WH Smith Group and marks a major step in our international travel retail growth strategy. It doubles the size of our international travel business and provides us with attractive growth opportunities.”
“The travel retail market in North America for digital accessories offers significant growth potential. As the market leader recognised for its best-in-class customer service, InMotion is well positioned to take advantage of that potential.”
“In addition, InMotion provides us with a scalable platform to launch the WH Smith airport format into the US, the world’s largest travel retail market for news, books and convenience products.”
“Finally, building on our recent successes in the digital accessories category in the UK and on InMotion’s supplier relationships and experience, we see significant potential to accelerate growth outside of the US using the InMotion format.”
“InMotion is run by a very experienced senior management team and we look forward to working with the CEO, Jeremy Smith, and his team to further develop both businesses across North America and other territories.”
Jeremy Smith, President & CEO of InMotion, adds: “The team at InMotion are delighted to be joining such an iconic business with a high growth international division. Working together, we look forward to combining our expertise in travel retail to grow the InMotion business further both within and outside of the US, while at the same time accelerating WH Smith’s international growth strategy.”
