BrewDog co-founder and chief executive James Watt his ambition to list the company on the stock market.
In an interview with Insider he revealed that the brewery is waiting until market conditions have stabilised before filing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
The Ellon-based business appointed law firm Freshfields to help with preparations back in January, with the most recent fundraising round putting the potential valuation at around £2bn.
“If you look at the stock markets this year, they're down 20 to 25%,” commented Watt. “As much as we would like to do an IPO, the market conditions at the moment are just not conducive, but it's something we're committed to do and we continue to get ready.”
The move to becoming a PLC is a long way from the brewery in a shed Watt and co-founder Martin Dickie started in a shed in 2007.
Their most popular beer (Punk IPA) and popular crowdfunding scheme (Equity For Punks) made clear the company's early ethos, with notoriety gained in the fledgling craft brewery sector by a series of headline-grabbing stunts.
In recent years these publicity launches have been toned down, as many got the company and its founders in trouble with advertising regulators and campaign groups.
Demonstrating the extent of the shift to corporate status, BrewDog started TV advertising in 2019 and recently rolled out a new campaign for its Lost Lager product.
Watt commented that the gradual shift has been to do with budget constraints - or the lack of.
“I think those things were successful,” he says of the original marketing strategy. “But I think there's only so many times you can do those types of things.
“It was something that was very effective for us and helped us get the name out there, but we’re 15 years old now and every company goes through new phases of evolution.”
Watt is keen to stress that BrewDog's latest phase is about the long-term sustainability of the brand, taking it from 15 to 50 years old with a focus on being environmentally friendly and a good place to work.
The last year has been a tough one for Watt, mostly due to problems around that last point.
While the pandemic was tough for most companies - BrewDog too lost around 70% of its revenue overnight when the first lockdown began in March 2020 - a lot of recent issues have been down to his leadership style.
Around this time last year, a group of former staff wrote an open letter accusing the co-founders of fostering a culture of fear, built on a cult of personality.
This was followed by more allegations made by a BBC documentary, many of them specifically targeted at Watt, who was accused of 'inappropriate behaviour' by current and former staff.
In response to the open letter, Watt announced an independent review of company culture, conducted by consultancy Wiser, as well as appointing former Asda chief executive Allan Leighton as a new non-executive chairman and mentor.
Watt claims the company has “gone above and beyond the Wiser report” in terms of the initiatives put in place to improve work conditions across the rapidly-expanding business.
He lists these as adding extra resources where understaffing existed, putting in place an anonymous ethics hotline and installing an employee representative group.
Then at the start of May, Watt announced he would donate 5% of his stake in the business - worth £100m at its most recent fundraising valuation - to 750 salaried crew members.
He also pledged to change how its bars operate, with half of profits being shared with staff, as part of a new business model.
Watt admitted that these changes should have been made a “bit earlier”, but that what was a painful experience at the time has helped the company “massively” in the long run.
“Alan's been a fantastic addition to the team, really excited about what he's done so far - I'm really excited about how he can help not just the company, but also myself, on the journey,” he added.
As for that tough first year of the pandemic, where 100 of BrewDog's locations closed, Watt says “honestly I didn't know if the business was gonna make it through”.
”We were almost out of cash, but thankfully our supermarket and online sales were good,” he continued. ”Furlough was very important to us - keeping our bar staff employed for that period of time - but it was definitely a very tough period to pull through.”
The brand refocused to become more online, with a 10 times boost in sales making up for BrewDog's many bars and hotels going in and out of lockdowns.
The company has also leaned in to its sustainability credentials, buying the Kinrara Estate in the Scottish Highlands to rewild and building an anaerobic digestion facility, water treatment and C02 recovery plant on-site at the Ellon headquarters.
“It was a crazy time to make those types of investments, but from our perspective, we're facing an existential climate crisis, and huge changes are needed right now, not in 2030, not in 2040, not in 2050.
“So we wanted to hopefully lead the way and show businesses what it's possible.”
Watt added: “I think to build any business, you've got to sometimes go against the conventional wisdom, you've got to be able to do things that other businesses are not doing.
“We've got it right sometimes, we’ve got it wrong sometimes, but we do things differently and trying to find our own ways to connect is the key to everything we do.”
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