WH Smith has signed an agreement for the acquisition of InMotion, a pure play travel retailer, for €174.4 (£155m). The Transaction marks a significant step in WH Smith’s international travel growth strategy. InMotion is the largest airport-based digital accessories retailer in North America. Established in 1998, it operates an attractive concession portfolio of 114 stores across 43 airports in the United States, with a presence in nine of the top ten and 22 of the top 25 busiest US airports.
InMotion will continue to operate as a standalone business as part of WH Smith’s international travel business. The experienced senior management team of InMotion will continue to lead the business, including Jeremy Smith, who has been CEO of InMotion for 12 years.
Stephen Clarke, Group Chief Executive, WH Smith, commented: "InMotion is a highly successful pure-play travel retailer in the world’s largest travel retail market. The acquisition of InMotion is an exciting value creation opportunity for the WH Smith Group and marks a major step in our international travel retail growth strategy. It doubles the size of our international travel business and provides us with attractive growth opportunities. The travel retail market in North America for digital accessories offers significant growth potential. As the market leader, recognised for its best-in-class customer service, InMotion is well positioned to take advantage of that potential. In addition, InMotion provides us with a scalable platform to launch the WH Smith airport format into the US, the world’s largest travel retail market for news, books and convenience products. Finally, building on our recent successes in the digital accessories category in the UK and on InMotion’s supplier relationships and experience, we see significant potential to accelerate growth outside of the US using the InMotion format. InMotion is run by a very experienced senior management team and we look forward to working with the CEO, Jeremy Smith, and his team to further develop both businesses across North America and other territories.”
Jeremy Smith, President & CEO of InMotion, added: “The team at InMotion are delighted to be joining such an iconic business with a high growth international division. Working together, we look forward to combining our expertise in travel retail to grow the InMotion business further both within and outside of the US, while at the same time accelerating WH Smith’s international growth strategy.”
