Boohoo puts £72m London office up for sale amid turnaround struggles

Retailer willing to offload Soho base at £12m loss as it battles to shore up balance sheet

Fast fashion retailer Boohoo is seeking to offload its office in London’s Soho as it battles to shore up its balance sheet.
The troubled retailer has been looking for offers of around £60m for its base in the capital, according to market sources, just three years after splashing £72m on the building.
It is understood that any deal will include a sale-and-leaseback agreement in which Boohoo will occupy the premises at 10 Great Pulteney Street for up to five years.
Boohoo first bought the six-storey office building in 2021 as part of its rapid expansion, snapping up 43,963 sq ft of office space to house its growing stable of brands.
This followed deals for stricken department store chain Debenhams and former Arcadia brands Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis.
Other labels it had picked up in the preceding years included Karen Millen, Oasis and Coast.
Details of the proposed office sale, first reported by Drapers, have emerged as Boohoo faces questions over its ability to meet looming debt repayments.
It has currently a £325m unsecured overdraft, which it is required to repay during the course of the next 18 months.
A £75m slice of that sum is due next year after lenders refused to extend the deadline. The remaining £250m needs to be repaid by 2026.
This is against the backdrop of mounting losses, which rose to £160m in the 12 months to February, compared to £91m the previous year.
Turnover also fell by 17pc to around £1.5bn, while the business swung from a positive cash position of £6m to £95m of net debt.
Boohoo’s slump in sales has led to its share price falling to less than 29p, less than one tenth of its peak in 2020.
This has left Boohoo nursing a drastic drop in its overall value, as the company is now worth just over £350m. That is compared to more than £5bn during Covid.
During its most recent full-year results, chief executive John Lyttle blamed Boohoo’s problems on “difficult market conditions”, adding that the business had been hit by “high levels of inflation and weakened consumer demand”.