Skip to main content
Story 25 September 2019
Public

News: IPO for tech startups – why, how and with whom to make it happen in Europe

news-ridays
Ana Luisa Pinho

The number of tech IPOs is growing in Europe, yet only 2% of tech startups adopt it as their financing strategy. Is it for established companies only and a heavy bureaucratic exercise?  To get some answers join the session about IPOs during European Research and Innovation Days and discover expert insight and live testimonials from listed EIC funded companies.

2018 was a good year for tech IPOs in Europe: 44 IPOs on European stock exchanges for a total amount of $4.2B capital raised with 2 around $1B IPOs by Farfetch on LSE and Adyen on the Dutch Euronext. This is however still much less then in US where 60 IPOs happened in 2018 for a total amount of $19.9B capital raised. At the same time the tech scaleup world is mostly venture capital driven – less than 2% of the world’s tech scaleups went through an IPO and only 10% of the overall capital fuelling the tech ecosystem in Europe came from the stock exchanges (Tech Scaleup IPOs – 2019 Report). An IPO is often not taken into consideration by startups while designing their financing strategies. The reasons for this might be multiple: ecosystem culture – entrepreneurs follow already traced paths, requirements barriers/regulation not suitable for emerging tech startups, but also lack of knowledge and misconceptions. An IPO is perceived as a mechanism for established, big companies, difficult to access, lengthy and heavy bureaucratic process, the owners lose control.

The European Innovation Council is already working with companies to promote the IPO opportunity. Within the EIC Business Acceleration Services, EIC funded companies could participate in  Investor Days organised together with Euronext or Nasdaq, learning about the IPO process and testing the investors' appetite. So far the EIC Community of 5000+ quality checked companies includes 17 IPO.

This Wednesday, 25th September, during Research and Innovation Days, don’t miss the workshop: Top tips as you start trading on the stock exchange to get first hand insights about the IPO process and it’s future in Europe. Our speakers include top listing experts: Camille Leca (Euronext), Barbara Lunghi (Borsa Italiana, LSEG), Jesus Gonzalez (BME Madrid stock exchange) and listed companies: Cecilia Driving (CFO, BIOVICA) and Alexandre Saboundjian (CEO, Audiovalley).

Can’t make it to Research and Innovation Days? The event will be web streamed live from 16h00 to 17h00 at "European R&I Days web".

 

Article written by Agnieszka Stasiakowska.
Learn more about the European Research and Innovation Days.

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.

Please log in to see comments and contribute