Today marks Vancouver’s BuildDirect‘s first day trading as a public company listed under the ticker symbol “BILD” on the TSX Venture Exchange.
BuildDirect successfully completed a reverse take over, raised $20.5 million through a private placement and is now valued at $160 million.
Founded in 1999 by Jeff Booth and Rob Banks, BuildDirect is a platform for purchasing and selling building materials online.
Following a year of significant growth in the home improvement products industry driven by a shift towards investment in the home, as well as record breaking online growth in building material purchases, in 2020 BuildDirect saw online building material sales grow more than 30% year-over-year.
“Becoming a publicly traded company is an important milestone for BuildDirect, however, we believe our best days are ahead of us as we leverage our digital platform, expand our reach into bricks and mortar independent retailers and capture B2B professionals,” added BuildDirect CEO Dan Park.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time, but the future has never looked so bright for the home improvement industry and for BuildDirect.”
BuildDirect’s path to becoming a publicly traded company has been far from direct.
In 2017 the company’s co-founder and former CEO Jeff Booth stepped down from his role right before the company filed for creditor protection, citing debt he brought into the company that undervalued the overall business.
In 2018 BuildDirect exited Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings with a successful round of financial restructuring that included USD $43 million led by Mohr Davidow Ventures.
“We are very bullish on the shift towards professional contractors,” said Mohr Davidow Ventures’ Katherine Barr at the time. “BuildDirect is pursuing a very large market opportunity and we believe that the company’s assets, capabilities, and executive leadership uniquely position the Company to be extremely successful moving forward.”
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