Revolve Scores $ 1.23 Billion IPO Valuation

● The e-commerce company is set to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange Friday.

Revolve is ready to go.

The data- and influencer-savvy e-commerce company priced its shares at $18 each for its initial public offering — giving the company a valuation of $1.23 billion when it starts to trade on the New York Stock Exchange Friday. The price came in at the high end of the $16 to $18 range the company estimated last week.

Its Class A shares will be listed under the ticker symbol “RVLV.”

The offering is intended to give the company more financial flexibility, create public market for its shares and raise money for early backers.

Co-chief executive officers Mike Karanikolas and Michael Mente, who founded the company in 2003, are also selling 1.2 million shares, through MMMK Development Inc., but will still hold 66.9 percent of voting rights at the firm by virtue of their 38.7 million Class B shares.

Private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners is the biggest seller in the offering, selling 7.1 million shares.

Revolve is part of a mini-wave of fashion introductions (and reintroductions) to the market, including Farfetch in September, followed by Levi Strauss & Co. in March and the VF Corp. jeans spin-off Kontoor Brands Inc. last month. (Gap Inc. is also planning to spin off Old Navy and J. Crew Group is considering splitting off Madewell).

The company revealed its IPO plans last fall as Farfetch was stoking interest in the fashion e-commerce world only to have the broader market sour.

But even with the delay Revolve — and the rest of these companies — come into the market at a tough time for many consumer companies. The U.S.-China trade war has disrupted a big chunk of the fashion supply chain and stocks have zigzagged as investors gauge an uncertain geopolitical climate, with everything from Brexit to the next tweet from President Trump looming.

The economic recovery from the

Great Recession has also been extremely long-lived and is expected to give way to contraction eventually.

That could make this year a good time for investors to cash in by taking their companies public.

The offering also puts Revolve under the microscope, making it a test case for how well the e-commerce players of today stand up to the pressure of the public market. Unlike the platform player Farfetch, which plays in the luxury space where margins tend to be much higher, Revolve is much more mainstream in its pricing.

Still, Revolve is growing quickly and investors always like a growth story.

Sales expanded 24.8 percent last year to $498.7 million while earnings increased more than fivefold to $30.7 million.

Now Wall Street is going to be pushing for more.