Online review site Trustpilot plans £1bn London listing

Online review website Trustpilot has unveiled plans for a £1bn listing in London, further bolstering the city’s hopes to become an emerging hub for technology initial public offerings. 

The company, which is based in Copenhagen, said it was planning to list around a quarter of its shares and looking to raise $50m (£36m) in an initial public offering, to help accelerate its growth plans. 

The float is expected to value Trustpilot at around £1bn. 

Trustpilot’s decision to choose London would see it become the first major internet company from the European Union to pick the city for its listing following Brexit – a sign that the city is still able to attract major foreign companies and boosting hopes it will become a tech magnet.

Boss Peter Mühlmann said London had been a “natural choice for us”. “This was partially because the UK is a really important market for us, but also a market which will have a lot of growth potential. There is a lot of liquidity on the London Stock Exchange.

“I really believe in London as a as a future tech hub. After Trustpilot, I think you will see a lot of other very significant tech IPOs in London.”

Others including Deliveroo and Darktrace are expected to list in London over the coming months, whilst online card retailer Moonpig joined the London Stock Exchange last month. 

Despite signs London is already landing major tech listings, the UK is currently reviewing its listing regime to see how it can attract more innovative companies.

Those behind the review are expected to recommend things such as allowing companies to list fewer shares to be admitted to the premium section of the market or allowing for dual-class shares, to give founders more control over their companies.

However, Mr Mühlmann said Trustpilot had decided against waiting for any of these potential changes to come into force. “There’s always something that you can wait for. There was the question of whether we were ready for it, and we just thought, yes, we are so let’s go.”

Trustpilot will be looking to go public after a year which has seen huge numbers of services go online, offering a way for customers to know which services they can trust.

Revenues, generated from companies subscribing to its services to be able to see and engage with consumer reviews, have jumped around 60pc since 2018 to $102m last year. 

Mr Mühlmann said consumers were using Trustpilot “more than ever before”. 

However, it has recently had to ramp up work to tackle fake reviews, and said it had had to remove more than 2.2 million fake reviews over 2020, which was around 5.7pc of those on the site that year. 

Last month, one of the people using its site to review solicitors was sued after leaving negative comments on their service, something Trustpilot warned users against. In a post on its site at the time, Trustpilot had said that it “strongly opposes the use of legal action to silence consumers’ freedom of speech”.