Jessica Alba’s CPG Honest Co. Files For IPO; Seeks $100 Million

The Honest Company, which was co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, filed Friday (April 9) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to go public, according to a registration statement.

The filings indicate the Los Angeles-based company will seek to list on the Nasdaq at a value of $100 million. That value is unlikely to stick however as Bloomberg in January estimated the company could achieve a market capitalization of about $2 billion.

According to the filing, The Honest Company’s revenue grew to $300.5 million in 2020, up from $235.6 million the year before. The filing further states: “Diapers and Wipes, Skin and Personal Care and Household and Wellness categories” were up by 16.4 percent, 35.5 percent and 116.5 percent in 2020, respectively, compared to 2019.

Gross margin in 2020, according to the filing, was 35.9 percent in 2020, up 3.7 percent from 2019. The Honest Company reported a net loss in 2020 of $14.5 million.

Describing its business strengths in the SEC filing, The Honest Company listed one of them as strong in-house research and development.

“Product innovation lies at the heart of our business,” the filing stated. “We have built a high-performance product development team that sets new standards with a proven track record of bringing innovative, award-winning products to market. To maximize the impact of our product development capabilities, our direct connection with our community enables us to understand what consumers’ needs are and inspires our product innovation pipeline, which we believe generates a significant competitive advantage over more traditional CPG peers.

“Our product innovation is inspired by feedback from our consumers that we receive through multiple avenues, including through our internal customer service team, comments left by consumers on our social media platforms and product ratings on our website and retailer’s websites.”

The company said in the filing that it plans to “increase sales through eCommerce channels.”

“We plan to grow Honest.com by leveraging our deep connection with existing consumers and drawing new consumers through increased brand awareness and investing in performance marketing,” the filing stated. “Our flagship digital platform is core to our consumer engagement strategy, providing an immersive brand experience through our original content as well as a convenient shopping channel. Additionally, we intend to leverage our successful relationships with our third-party ecommerce partners with an aim to capture the growing portion of CPG sales transacted online in the United States.”

The company also stated in the filing that it intends to “increase breadth and depth of distribution at domestic detail partners” and “grow international sales.”