Mytheresa Group GmbH’s parent company MYT Netherlands Parent B.V has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US. As stated in the announcement, MYT proposed the IPO of American Depositary Shares (ADS) representing its ordinary shares.

On the 28th of December, Mytheresa’s parent company MYT Netherlands Parent B.V filed for an IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Also, MYT said that Mytheresa, a fashion and luxury brand recorded a 27.5% increase in its quarterly net sales.

MYT Files for IPO

Per the IPO, MYT plans to list the ADS under the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker “MYTE.” A news release provided by Mytheresa gave more details on the underwriters for the proposed offering:

“Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as lead book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters for the proposed offering. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and UBS Investment Bank are acting as book-running managers for the proposed offering. Jefferies Group LLC is acting as co-manager and Cowen Inc. is acting as passive bookrunner for the proposed offering.”

Although Mytheresa’s parent company MYT has filed its registration statement on Form F-1 with the SEC, the press release revealed that it is not yet effective. Until the registration statement becomes effective, MYT will not sell or offer the securities.

Mytheresa Records Gains in Quarterly Sales

During the quarter which ended on the 30th of September, MYT said German online retailer Mytheresa raised $126.4 million euros.

Reports showed that Mytheresa generated 6.4 million euros in its 2020 fiscal year, compared to $1.7 million euros raised in the previous year during the same period. Also adjusted net income reached 19.3 million euros and volume climbed 449 million euros in Fiscal 2019.

In the company’s 2020 fiscal year, about 68% of its net sales came from its top 30 brand partners. The CEO & president of Mytheresa Michael Kliger wote in the registration statement:

“Our long-standing brand relationships include Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Balmain, Bottega Veneta, Burberry, Dries van Noten, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Loewe, Loro Piana, Moncler, Prada, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney and Valentino.”

As a result of the pandemic and the global lockdown, there was a significant increase in volume of online shopping. At the time, online shopping retailers worldwide recorded gains during the stay-home period.

As online retailers generated increases during the stay-home period, other firms were recorded losses in their stocks. Swedish multinational retail company H&M – Hennes & Mauritz AB – (Stockholm: HM.B) reported an unexpected loss in 2020 Q3.

In the quarter, H&M sales dropped 16% to 51 million kronor, which equals $5.7 million. The group noted that the losses are caused by global lockdown. However, H&M added that the company was already recovering from the negative effects of the health crisis.

Despite recording declines and plans to close hundreds of stores, H&M said there is an increase in its online shopping as many people resorted to online shopping to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

next Business News, IPO News, Market News, News, Stocks

Opyn, a marketplace for decentralized finance (DeFi) options, has rolled out a host of new features in its updated protocol that aim to make the crypto options markets more efficient and liquid. 

While Opyn entered DeFi with an insurance-like product for governance tokens such as compound, its focus has since pivoted to the options market in the digital asset space. According to Zubin Koticha, co-founder of Opyn, the pivot is driven both by user interest and by the sort of hurdles decentralized finance currently faces. 

“The biggest issue with DeFi is that [in] traditional finance, you don’t need super over-collateralization,” said Koticha. He added that the differing requirements on capital also eat into DeFi’s competitiveness with traditional finance. 

Put simply, options are financial contracts that give users the right to buy or sell an underlying instrument at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. Depending on what they make of market trends, options allow traders to bet on the future bullish or bearish nature of the market. 

While options have long existed in traditional finance they are relatively new to the crypto space and hence come with their own hurdles. 

Koticha pointed out that under Opyn’s earlier version users needed to put up 100% of the strike price, the agreed-upon price for the option, as collateral in order to mint and sell one. This differs from traditional options markets where the requirements can be significantly lower. 

According to Opyn, the update will add a host of new features to its options marketplace, including cash settlement for options without the need to exchange underlying assets, the ability for yield-earning assets to be used as collateral for options, and margin improvements for options. 

“We changed our system from physical settlement to cash settlement,” said Koticha. Noting that while traditional markets also cater to needs to settle options in physical commodities like grain, he said there is no such physical delivery need in the crypto space and hence little need to actually exchange the asset. Instead, only the difference in price needs to be delivered.  

Although the overall thrust of changes at Opyn are geared toward added efficiencies in how decentralized finance handles capital, the changes are only part of the upgrades in the pipeline. Koticha said Opyn is also plotting a protocol upgrade that will add the functionality to net short and long options together, thereby freeing up more capital. 

Earlier in August, Opyn discoveredf a vulnerability on its platform when attackers were able to exploit a bug and walk away with $370,000. According to report by Cointelegraph, the bug allowed attackers to double-spend Opyn’s oToken and thereby steal the collateral put up by users. 

In response, Opyn laid out in a blog post a set of measures it would adopt to prevent another such exploit and also compensated users affected by it. According to Koticha, the platform has continued to build on its security by performing additional audits and adding a functionality to pause the system. 

While a central kill-switch seems counterintuitive to the ever-bustling crypto markets, Koticha said that with plans to launch a governance token in the future Opyn wants to transfer the kill-switch controls to decentralized governance for the long run. 

In what confirms the continued embrace of Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins by institutional investors and the big-money clients, Grayscale’s total Assets Under Management (AUM) has been reported to top $19 billion, a significant uplift from the $16.4 billion reported a week ago. According to a report by CoinDesk, Grayscale hit this AUM milestone on December 28, and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust holds by far the largest chunk of the total assets at $16.3 billion.

The recent rally of Bitcoin to new highs as recorded in the past days started as a chain reaction that took its precedent months ago when Wall Street firms and institutional investors began betting big on Bitcoin. The investment made by the likes of MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR), Square Inc (NYSE: SQ), and PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) did not just help put Bitcoin in the limelight through mainstream media, it also prompted the embrace of the digital assets by other firms.

With this chain reaction, the price of Bitcoin continued to soar in response to boosted demand for the coin, and institutions like Grayscale that serves institutional investors benefited from this new demand, and hence, the continued increase in the firm’s AUM. Besides BTC, Grayscale’s Ethereum (ETH) AUM is now worth $2.1 billion, while the bulk of smaller holdings in Litecoin (LTC), XRP, and ZCash amongst others helped Grayscale’s total AUM to reach the new milestone.

Grayscale’s AUM May See More Boost in 2021

While it may be too early to project the possible performance of Grayscale in the coming year 2021, the spate of patronage the company recorded in the last two quarters of 2020 makes the case for improved performance provided the tempo is sustained.

Just as has been noted earlier, the continued embrace of cryptocurrency assets by highly liquid companies will continue to have a positive reaction on the price of Bitcoin, and by extension, this will even make more people pick interest in BTC. As a relatively young asset class, Bitcoin and altcoins have tremendous room to grow as the adoption rate is still not optimized owing to certain regulatory provisions in most countries, Grayscale and other hedge funds have enough room to compete for new clients entering the space.

With Grayscale been among the institutions at the forefront of helping to drive the acceptance of BTC, ETH, and other digital currencies, enjoying the dividends of its works through impressed AUM figures does not come as much of a surprise.

next Altcoin News, Bitcoin News, Cryptocurrency news, News