Oddity Tech,
a company that is weaving technology into the beauty industry, is going public Wednesday.
Shares of Oddity, which will trade under the ticker symbol “ODD” on the Nasdaq Global Market, were priced at $35 a share on Tuesday, higher than the marketed range of $32 to $34.
“We’re going public to build something really huge,” Oddity Chief Financial Officer Lindsay Drucker Mann told Barron’s on Wednesday.
Oddity is led by Oran Holtzman, co-founder and chief executive officer—who will have about 76.9% of voting power of outstanding share capital —and his sister, Shiran Holtzman-Erel, co-founder and chief product officer.
The company has a research and development center in Tel Aviv, and a business headquarters in New York. Its online brands, IL Makiage and SpoiledChild, launched in 2018 and 2022, respectively, and in April the company established Oddity Labs alongside its acquisition of Revela, a biotechnology company dedicated to developing new molecules for beauty and wellness.
“They [longstanding players in the beauty industry] will say that the under-penetration online is because the consumer wants to be in stores, she wants to try it on,” Mann said. “And our insight was it’s not that she wants to be there, it’s that she has to be there, she needs help. She doesn’t know what to choose.”
Enter technology, the company’s main focus. Oddity is aiming to transform the $600 billion global beauty and wellness market. It is devoting dollars to data science, machine learning, and computer vision, and has built a platform of more than 40 million users and generated more than 1 billion unique data points on users’ beauty preferences. Those beauty preferences can be gleaned through online quizzes, as illustrated in the TikTok video here.
“That’s the unlock for us, is how we’ve used technology to, in many ways, and in many instances, give an experience that’s even superior to what you get in store,” Mann said.
And rather than relying on celebrity endorsements, the company is “going direct to the consumer through digital channels,” Mann explained. An advantage of that direct-to-consumer strategy? The company is “not reliant on a retailer and who they’re bringing across these lines,” the chief financial officer said.
Oddity is profitable, unlike many money-losing companies that have gone public over the past several years. For the three months ended March 31, net income was $19.6 million, up from $3 million a year ago, while net revenue rose to $165.7 million from $90.4 million.
In a securities filing, Oran Holtzman said Oddity would continue to add new brands to its platform. “We are going after the most attractive demand pools—huge markets dominated by legacy brands, and where our technology can solve a real consumer pain point.”
Write to Emily Dattilo at [email protected]
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