BrewDog Announces Plans To Go Public

BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt dropped some big news at the Equity Punks Annual General Mayhem gathering in Scotland over the weekend…that the Scottish punk beer brand (now very much a multinational) was planning to enter the stock market as early as 2020.

According to The Telegraph Watt explained that the IPO was  ‘between two and four years away and that he had spoken to several ­investment banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Jefferies about the options for floating the company as recently as last week.”

He also indicated that while a UK listing was more likely, a US stock exchange was not off the table.

BrewDog is currently funded by a hugely successful series of ‘Equity For Punks’ crowdfunding campaigns. And going public would help its 75,000 so-called “equity punks” – retail investors who have bought shares in the ­company – cash in their investments if they wanted to.

As things stand now BrewDog’s “Equity Punks” can only trade their shares once per year on websites which match buyers and sellers, and becoming a publically traded company would afford the those investors greater liquidity.

Watt added that they expect to float around 40 percent of the company allowing him and co-founder Martin Dickie to remain BrewDog’s largest ­shareholders.

In addition to its crowdfunded source of equity, BrewDog has also received venture capital funding.

In April of 2017, TSG Consumer Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm already invested in Pabst and Sweetwater Brewing acquired a 22% stake in the company, a $265 million deal that netted Watt and Dickie more than $100 million.

As of now only 10 percent of the venture capital money has been spent, but Watt indicated in his presentation over the weekend that that capital would soon be put to good use.

Founded in 2007, the Aberdeenshire, Scotland headquartered beer and drinks company has already unveiled an audacious program for global expansion. Earlier this year it announced plans to open a brewery in China and confirmed a new brewery in Australia.

BrewDog currently runs 50 bars globally: 33 in the UK, one in the US, one in Australia, one in Brazil and 14 across Europe and now has plans to open a ‘craft beer hotel’ at its headquarters in Scotland, similar to what it did in Ohio.

BrewDog also recently purchased a chain of craft beer bars around London and they have just bought into Hawkes an artisan cidery.