Appliances Online: SFW?

I've just read the opening two paragraphs of a Sunday Times article from yesterday (February 16 2014) about how “fear and greed are driving a stampede of companies to the stock market”.

It cites the case of Bolton-headquartered Appliances Online, a seller of traditional domestic white goods. Its unique selling point seems to be that “if your TV breaks down at lunchtime on a Saturday [the company] can replace it in time for Match of the Day (and take away the old one).

Let's ignore for a moment that TVs are normally referred to as brown goods rather than white; I'm not that much of a pedant. Let's look instead at the guts of the business model. Let's say lunchtime on Saturday is noon to 13.00h, and MoTD starts around 22.30.

To transport a TV from a warehouse in Crewe to a house in, say, Milton Keynes in around 10 hours might have been a Kryptonian feat four decades ago. But in 2014 is it that much of a dealmaker for a consumer?

I don't know about you, but I have a Curry's superstore within a six-minute of my front door, the sales floor of which is crammed with TVs of every make, size and price. If I am willing to do the installing, or can find a suitably qualified and available technician, I could have a new TV in situ within an hour, at most, leaving me all afternoon to watch Gillette Soccer Saturday and associated programming.

Why on earth would Appliances Online be worth £1.2bn, 150 times last year's pre-tax profits and double the multiple commanded by Facebook on its market debut?

Internet Boom 2.0 I suggest, inevitably followed by Internet Bust 2.0. But what would I know? I'm a jobbing hack, not an investment analyst. Sometimes, though, that lower visceral reaction kicks in and I pay close attention to what it's trying to tell me.

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