The founder of AO.com is this week sitting on a very comfortable pile.
His total worth is now £542 million, including a 28.6 per cent stake he still has in the business, which is not bad for a company that many people had not heard of until last year.
The Financial Times points out today that his fortune now ranks alongside Harry Potter author JK Rowling and the success of the float has stunned the market.
Onlookers have balked at the valuation of the firm but Roberts' fortune is simply an abject lesson in the laws of supply and demand. The London Stock exchange has been starved of ecommerce firms and sellers of such prized commodities have never been shy of setting prices high.
The company is now valued at an astonishing six times last year's sales and about 200 times profit.
Roberts, of course, insists that the valuation is fair and that he can expand the firm both in the UK and overseas to match expectations. That may be so but some of that strategic growth is still a long way off.
Meanwhile, his advisers on the float Rothschild made £12 million on the £1.2 billion IPO and total fees to the banks involved reached £20 million.
Not so happy, says the FT, are the one third of the 300 investors that received no share allocation despite applying and missed out on the 33 per cent rise in price on the first day. Just 15 investors received 85 per cent of the shares.
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