What makes Alex Baldock right for Boots’ IPO hopes?

He’s credited with saving Currys, having arrived in 2018 amid nosediving profits, fended off takeover attempts, and left a revived retailer on a growth footing earlier this year.

Now he’s charged with working his magic at Boots, where he is due to take over this autumn as CEO. So, how did Alex Baldock reverse Currys’ fortunes? And is he the candidate to lead Boots into an IPO as soon as next year?

Baldock joined Currys (then called Dixons Carphone) following Sebastian James’ resignation as CEO, when the business was still struggling in the wake of a 2014 merger with Carphone Warehouse. It ended its 2018/19 financial year with profits down 22%, and Baldock set it on a turnaround path of merging mobile and electrical divisions and making stores “exciting places”, including new ‘gaming battlegrounds’.

The company closed more than 500 standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in 2020, consolidated its retail brands as Currys the following year, and fought off takeover interest from China’s JD.com and US investment firm Elliott in 2024.

Currys’ latest annual results to May show like-for-like sales up 4%, with adjusted profit before tax expected to be up 18%. The fact Currys’ value fell by more than £160m the day Baldock’s departure was announced in March underlines the Ctiy’s view of his importance in getting it to where it is.

“He’s led a really impressive transformation,” said Richard Lim, CEO and founder of consultancy Retail Economics.

“They were seeing competition from the likes of Amazon and commoditisation of a lot of the products that was squeezing margins. He’s navigated the business from a tricky and complicated position to a much stronger one by steering into the experience of stores.” He’s also done it by adding services such as repairs and installation, “blended with an Omnichannel proposition”, Lim adds.

Fran Minogue, managing partner at executive recruitment firm Clarity, says: “Alex is very rational and analytical. He’s extremely bright and cuts right through to the heart of the key issues for the business and what needs to be done.”

Like Lim, Minogue says Baldock saw a need to focus on “service and expertise”, rather than price alone. In doing so he’s created “a far more sustainable and profitable business”.

It hasn’t just been about the customer experience. Baldock sees that “if you look after staff, they will do the job and look after customers”, says Minogue.

Unequivocal clarity helps. “He appeals to colleagues’ rational side and makes it crystal clear what is required.”

The challenge at Boots

Boots, too, has improved in recent years, in some ways echoing developments at Currys. Weighed down by an oversized estate, not least legacy branches on flagging high streets, Boots has closed over 300 stores since 2023, leaving about 1,800.

At the same time it has added more than 100 beauty brands and got better at keeping up with TikTok trends, making it “more interesting for younger generations, where it had lost out to Superdrug”, says GlobalData retail research director Patrick O’Brien.

It has made stores more experiential, revamping 180 Beauty Halls as consultation areas and adding ‘Wellness Zones’ to offer something neither supermarkets nor online can replicate.

Its health & beauty market share rose from 15% to 16.2% between 2021 and 2025, according to GlobalData.

Much of this progress is owed to Sebastian James, Boots UK MD from 2018 until November 2024, and O’Brien thinks he leaves Baldock a tougher act to follow than he did at Currys.

“Currys was in a bad place when Baldock took over and he was able to put his stamp on it,” says O’Brien. At Boots, Baldock will arrive at a retailer James has already “revived with some difficult decisions”.

But Baldock may also be less shackled thanks to the new ownership structure since Sycamore’s buyout of Walgreens last year, in which Boots Group was split off as an independent company. 

“One of the frustrations James had was the investment he wanted for more store improvements,” says a source. “My understanding is he never really got what he was looking for.”

As CEO, Baldock may also be given more control than both James and current Boots MD Anthony Hemmerdinger, the latter having worked under Boots Group CEO Ornella Barra until she retired to be chair in February. Plus Hemmerdinger, who is staying in his role until Baldock joins, is “more of a retail ops guy, and Sycamore needs a heavyweight CEO to get the IPO away”, says retail consultant Nick Bubb.

Catherine Shuttleworth, CEO of shopper marketing agency Savvy, sees plenty of remaining opportunity for Baldock to improve the business.

Boots’ last trading update before the Sycamore takeover posted sales growth of 5% in the three months to 31 May 2025, its seventeenth consecutive quarter of market share growth. Boots.com sales were up 14.8%.

That’s despite missteps. It aimed to launch a third-party marketplace for brands in 2023, but pulled the idea later the same year, Shuttleworth notes.

“The online business is nowhere near the scale it could be,” she says. “A lot of brands want to piggyback on it.”

It has a partnership with the NHS, which has allowed it to offer consultations and prescription treatments without a GP appointment since 2024, and which is still a “massive opportunity”, says Shuttleworth.

Does Sycamore’s reported hope of a 2027 IPO, combined with analyst estimates of up to £7bn, allow enough runway?

“Every time Boots is being sold I hear these ridiculous valuations,” says one source. “The multiples don’t make sense.”

Bubb is more upbeat. “The core health & beauty business is in good shape and its consistent outperformance of the market shows it is structural growth,” he says. “I think the City is keen to invest in health & beauty, so the auguries for an IPO are good, particularly now Baldock will be running the show.”