Rumour: TV Salesman to buy SurfStitch!

Is this stud going to be SurfStitch's new daddy?

If you live in Australia, you’ll know Kogan.com. It’s the classic online discounter. Started out making TVs cheap and undercutting everyone, until it turned into a two hundred mill a year biz.

Lately, it’s got into phone plans, unlimited everything and a ton of data for twenty-five bucks a month.

Its founder, tech wizard Rusland Kogan, who is worth almost half-a-billion dollars, is convinced there’s a domino stack of online retailers about to collapse and he’s going to be there, waiting, to snatch ’em up for pennies.

As he told AAP,

“Over the last decade there has been a lot of online retailers who have done a great job in raising money building a website and then blow all the money on marketing and building a brand. As a result of that, we see a lot of those falling over in the coming year and that creates an opportunity for Kogan.com.”

And, as posited by SBS News,

“Chief financial officer David Shafer said the company was a bargain hunter and would only buy if the business was good value and earnings accretive.

Surf and sporting goods retailer Surfstitch and homewares and furniture business Temple & Webster are two high-profile and publicly traded loss-making online retailers.

SurfStitch shares are currently suspended pending various legal travails.

The last time they traded, each share was worth a little under seven cents, down from almost two bucks back in the glory days of late 2015.

SurfStitch’s market cap is around eighteen mill.

Peanuts for Kogan.