Luxury retailer Cettire is now at the centre of one of the fiercest debates on the ASX
A multi-year tear made luxury retail platform Cettire a market darling. But the rising star is now in the middle of a classic market stoush.
Just as Icarus was the boy who flew too close to the sun, Cettire’s heady run on the ASX boards has made it a victim of its own success – or so its backers allege – as it finds itself in the middle of a major market tug-o-war.
On the one side are the true believers in the online luxury retail platform - investors and sell side research analysts who have watched it grow from a $133 million minnow in July 2022 to an almost $2 billion company and rushed to defend it this week against new revelations about the business. On the other are a healthy number of market sceptics who believe that at the very least, it is an opaque business that is wildly overvalued.
Cettire this week became the latest in a long list of high flying ASX growth names that have been at the centre of long vs short battles in recent years including WiseTech, Corporate Travel Management and Afterpay. Not all of these battles have ended conclusively.
The debate rose to the surface this week after a report in the Australian Financial Review on Wednesday, which questioned whether the company was paying appropriate import duties, sparked a 20% selloff and briefly sending shares as low as $3.74.
