Huddled Group - shares up 21% on live-commerce software launch and JV
Shares in circular-economy e-commerce business Huddled Group (AIM: HUD) have gained 21% to 0.425p on two pieces of encouraging news: the launch of a proprietary live-commerce technology and the formation of a joint venture with AEWW Limited, operator of the AE Stores channel on sales channel Whatnot.
Live commerce refers to a mix of live-streaming, auctions, community chat and entertainment. It has become increasingly popular over the past few years, reshaping how consumers shop online. Via live commerce, platforms such as Whatnot, TikTok Shop and eBay Live are driving growth in buyer engagement and order volumes.
To take advantage of this trend, Huddled has developed software intended to address a key constraint in scaling live commerce: the coordination of stock, orders and fulfilment across multiple sellers and platforms. Its system connects third-party live-commerce sellers to Huddled's centralised stock pool and fulfilment infrastructure. This allows presenters to focus on what they do best, content and sales, while Huddled manages stock allocation, order processing and delivery. A key comment from Martin Higginson, Executive Chairman of Huddled Group, was: “The ability to offer next-day delivery on these platforms will, we believe, be a genuine game changer.”
Joint venture with AEWW
In other news, Huddled has entered into a joint venture with AEWW to accelerate growth in live auctions under its flagship Peeko brand. AEWW, which was founded in March this year, has grown its AE Stores follower count on Whatnot to 36.5k in under six months.
Using Huddled's newly-developed software, AE Stores will be rebranded Peeko Gadgets and brought into the venture alongside Huddled’s existing Peeko stores, which focus on beauty and treats, with further stores to be launched on the Whatnot platform as the venture scales.
The joint venture will focus exclusively on the Whatnot platform, the current live commerce market leader in this emerging sector. Current dwell times (the time a consumer spends on site) are circa 90 minutes on Whatnot, compared to only a few minutes on traditional e-commerce platforms, making for significantly increased engagement and sales opportunities.
Also interesting are comments from Jason McNeill and Regan McNeill, Joint Managing Directors of AEWW Limited, who said: "The biggest challenge we faced as a business was fulfilment - every time we accelerated sales, we hit a bottleneck on stock and delivery. The partnership with Huddled will remove those barriers entirely. Being able to offer next-day delivery on orders placed up to 11pm gives us a real USP in the Whatnot marketplace.”
Huddled Group 5-year share price chart
The business
Huddled Group is an e-commerce business which, following the merger of its Discount Dragon, Boop Beauty, and Nutricircle brands in April this year, operates a digital surplus superstore called Peeko at peeko.co.uk. The company specialises in rescuing surplus items and redistributing them at low prices – think 96 Cadbury crème eggs for twenty quid. The firm has spent the past 6 months improving unit economics, establishing next-day delivery as standard on orders made by 11pm, and earning an 'Excellent' Trustpilot rating across a combined total of over 35,000 reviews.
For the financial year to end-December 2025 Huddled posted revenues up by 44% to £18.65 million. However, the firm remained in the red despite narrowing its adjusted EBITDA loss from £2.94 million to £2.63 million.
In order to drive growth, in July this year Huddled completed a £1.51 million total equity fundraise, done at a hefty 54% discount to the closing price on the day before it was announced. Of the funds, £200,000 came from a retail offer which had to be doubled in size from £100,000 due to oversubscription. Also, Executive Chairman, Martin Higginson, subscribed for £175,000 of shares through his family investment company.
The funds are going to be used for a variety of reasons including: broadening and deepening the stock position; accelerating marketing activity, including TV and radio campaigns; and strengthening working capital. Encouragingly, the directors believe that the funds raised are sufficient to enable the company to become operationally cash flow positive.
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Disclosures
Huddled Group is not a corporate client of Optimo Research Ltd.
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