Online beauty retailer THG, formerly often known as The Hut Group, has walked away from acquisition talks with private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc., the corporate said in a press release Friday.

Shares of THG plunged 16.49 percent to 62.42 pence after the announcement was made.

Last month THG revealed that Apollo Global had made a preliminary bid. THG on the time described Apollo’s bid to accumulate the whole issued share capital of the retailer as “highly preliminary” and nonbinding.

Apollo had until Monday under U.K. takeover rules to make a firm offer or walk away, but THG Friday said that there was “not any merit” to further discussions with the private equity firm as its buyout proposal was based on “inadequate valuations.”

“Consideration and rejection of the indicative proposal has been on a basis consistent with all previous offers for the corporate, some a matter of public record, which were also rejected based upon inadequate valuations and the character of those offer structures,” the Manchester, England-based company added.

It’s not the primary time THG has turned down a takeover proposal. Last yr, the corporate rejected several of them. THG founder and chief executive officer Matt Moulding said those have all been “unacceptable” and had failed “to reflect the fair value of the group.”

THG has struggled on many levels because it listed on the London Stock Exchange in September 2020, and shares in the corporate have lost 85 percent of their value because the IPO.

THG owns online retailers including Cult Beauty and Lookfantastic, and types similar to Perricone MD and Espa.

In 2022, group revenue rose 2.7 percent to 2.24 billion kilos. Losses for the financial yr widened to 540 million kilos from 138 million kilos.

THG said losses increased for a wide range of reasons, including its efforts to limit customers’ exposure to commodity cost increases, and its 275.4 million pound write-down of the software it uses to operate third-party web sites. 

It also listed a series of non-recurring costs within the period, including 32.4 million kilos spent on a strategic review; 18.5 million kilos on international deliveries, predominantly in Asia, and mainly linked to COVID-19 restrictions, and 14.8 million kilos in administrative costs following an organization reorganization and related layoffs.