Everli Global, Italy's largest online grocery-delivery marketplace, moved a step closer to becoming a US-listed company this week after the Securities and Exchange Commission declared effective the registration statement tied to its merger with Melar Acquisition Corp. I, a special-purpose acquisition company.
The deal, first disclosed in January and detailed in a prospectus filed with US regulators, values the combined business at roughly $220 million and would list the merged company on Nasdaq under the ticker "EVRL," with shares priced at $10 apiece. Effectiveness of the registration statement clears the way for Melar to mail a definitive proxy statement to its shareholders and schedule a vote on the combination.
Founded in Milan, Everli operates a marketplace that connects shoppers with grocery retailers and handles the picking, packing and last-mile delivery of their orders, a model the company has built out across Italy over the past decade. Backers of the deal have cast the listing as a rare opportunity for a European e-grocery company to tap the deeper pools of capital available in US public markets.
"This represents the natural next step" in Everli's growth story, with US public markets offering "the most liquid, transparent and sought-after venue globally for growing companies."
— Salvatore Palella, Founder and President, Palella Holdings
The listing comes through a SPAC merger, which has remained one route for growth companies to reach US exchanges without a traditional initial public offering, giving sponsors like Melar a potentially faster and more certain path to a listing than a conventional IPO process. Such deals have also drawn scrutiny over the years for redemption risk, which can leave a combined company with far less cash than originally raised if existing blank-check shareholders choose to cash out rather than roll their holdings into the merger.
A date for the shareholder vote on the merger has not yet been scheduled. If approved, the combined company would become one of a small number of European e-grocery platforms trading on a US exchange, at a moment when grocery-delivery and retail-logistics platforms globally continue to compete for investor attention alongside faster-growing AI and infrastructure names.
