In the excitement caused by NVIDIA earnings, renewed Iran war peace hopes and hotter-than-expected unemployment down under, you could be forgiven for overlooking a fresh IPO debut on Thursday: that of SkinKandy (ASX:SK1).
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SkinKandy‘s name is eye-catching, and you’d be forgiven for wondering if Adultshop was having a second go at listing on the ASX. Or Planet Platinum, a company which was once listed on the ASX over a decade ago that managed a strip club in Melbourne.
It’s not the strangest thing that’s ever listed on the ASX.
Fortunately (or perhaps not), SkinKandy doesn’t necessarily work in an area so straightforwardly salacious. The company actually manages a skin piercing franchise with stores predominately located on the east coast
Skin piercing: as in nose rings, earrings, belly button adornments, and the like. Yes, really. Talk about a fresh breath from AI.
Perhaps more interesting is that it’s one of the pricier listings, too. Shares went live around $2.25/sh on Thursday; they closed slightly higher at $2.34/sh on the back of over $3M worth of shares changing hands. Not terrible.
The company’s overall value proposition is, to the cynically-minded at least, perhaps fair to call curious. Like Koala, like Guzman y Gomez, SkinKandy doesn’t have its eyes on the Australian market – it has its eyes on global expansion.
SkinKandy wants to take its skin piercing store brand into Singapore and other parts of Asia, though it must be asked if the company is under the impression that punk music hasn’t hit Singapore yet. Like most countries with a conservative top-heavy culture, it absolutely has.
Still, this finance journalist’s attempts to be a smart-arse don’t necessarily mean the plan could fall flat. Surely, punks already existing in Singapore means SkinKandy will have a ready customerbase. There is that consideration.
But it can’t be denied there is something of a novelty behind the brand’s plans to list on the ASX. In fact, we only really heard about them in the AFR a week-ago. The company has clearly taken advantage of the ASX’s relatively recent changes to the fast-track listing process.
It also can’t be denied it’s a curious time to list. Tariff pressures, war in Iran ratcheting up geopolitical macro, an energy crisis, a re-budding inflation crisis at home and abroad…it’s a curious time to list a skin piercing brand on a national stock market.
Then again, perhaps they’ve identified gains to be made from the lipstick effect. And as far as I can ascertain, Gen Z are pretty into piercings. (I think?)
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