‘Zero conversations’ about London IPO valuation, says Shein boss

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Shein’s executive chair has insisted that neither investors nor management of the fast-fashion retailer have raised concerns with him over the company’s valuation as it pursues a blockbuster London listing in the face of trade tariffs and stiff competition.

Donald Tang told the Financial Times that none of its existing investors — which include Sequoia China, now known as HongShan, General Atlantic and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala — had raised any grievances about Shein’s valuation ahead of a planned initial public offering.

“To me, if anybody is not happy, they haven’t told me yet. I have only spoken to our existing shareholders — nothing but happiness,” he said in an interview in which he repeatedly refused to discuss directly the company’s IPO plans, which he called “the elephant in the room”.

Shein was valued at $66bn during its most recent funding round in 2023. But some investors and other stakeholders have been agitating for the valuation to be cut to about $30bn, the Financial Times previously reported, a move that could help it to complete an IPO in the first half of this year.

Tang, who joined the China-founded group in 2022 to help spearhead a stock market listing, said there had been “zero conversations” among Shein’s management about having to slash its valuation.

“When we are actually going public, there will be that question [about valuation], but we’re not going public right now . . . We had no conversation so far, zero,” he said.

Shein, now headquartered in Singapore, first launched plans to go public in New York in late 2023 but pivoted to the UK after being spurned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Even at a heavily reduced valuation, a flotation would be one of the biggest this decade on the London market, which has struggled to attract and retain large international listings.

The company, which ships cheap garments made mostly in Chinese factories directly to shoppers around the world, is facing strong competition from rival group Temu and uncertainty over the future of a key exemption to US import duties for packages worth less than $800.

US President Donald Trump last month ended the “de minimis” exemption before putting the move on hold as parcels piled up at entry points to America. Trump also introduced an additional 10 per cent tariff on imports from China, then doubled it to 20 per cent last week.

Shein suffered a 40 per cent fall in net profit to $1bn in 2024, people with knowledge of its internal projections told the FT previously.

Tang said investors were “very happy because . . . we have improved the efficiency, we have reduced the waste . . . and continue to grow robustly and profitably at scale”.

He acknowledged there had been “fluctuation” in the company’s profit margins but said the group had come through previous disruption, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He refused to be drawn on the impact on Shein from the closure of the “de minimis” tax loophole but said that the group was “resilient and agile”, adding that it “has always had a globalised model, so we’ve already started to do global diversification”.

Shein previously told investors that a listing could happen as soon as April but an IPO could be pushed into the second half of this year as it navigates challenges, including changes to US tariff rules.

Asked whether Shein was now more likely to IPO in the second half the year, he said: “You’d want to IPO sooner than later.”

The company filed confidential IPO paperwork with the UK markets regulator in June. Tang declined to comment on the progress towards a listing as Shein awaits approval from regulators in the UK and China.

“If I’m having an agreement with others to make everything confidential I’m not going to violate that covenant,” he said.

But he said that by going through the listing process, the company “can embrace the universal mechanism for accountability and transparency because there are requirements instead of optionality” regarding the information that public companies must disclose.

“By doing that properly we can earn the most amount of public trust,” he said.

Shein was founded in 2012 but its sales were turbocharged by the boom in online shopping during the pandemic. It has faced scrutiny from politicians and campaigners over allegations of poor working practices in its sprawling supply chains.

The company was accused by a British MP in January of “not respecting” a parliamentary committee. It followed an appearance by Shein’s top lawyer in Europe in which she refused to answer the committee’s questions about the provenance of the cotton used in its products and whether it acknowledged there was forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

Tang said that Shein subsequently wrote to MPs answering all questions. Shein has said it has a “zero-tolerance policy” to forced labour and much of its cotton is understood to come from Australia and the US.

Although Shein initially sought to list in the US, Tang hailed London as a “fantastic capital market”. “It has the best timezone, the best language. It has the best separation between legality and politics, and it has . . . one of the highest standards for accountability,” he said.