Since 1 January 2022, France has added four new unicorns, young unlisted companies with valuations exceeding one billion dollars. After an excellent year in 2021, Ankorstore, Payfit, Exotec and Spendesk have joined the exclusive club of French unicorns, lifting their number to 26 (versus four three years ago). These young startups succeeded in raising 12 billion dollars in 2021, with the objective of becoming international champions.

According to CB Insights data, Europe has over 300 unicorns, including 100 new entries in 2021.

The highest valued among these companies is the Swedish fintech Klarna at 45 billion dollars. With over 90 million users, Klarna facilitates online purchases by enabling consumers to pay in several instalments. On the worldwide level, the threshold of 1,000 unicorns was exceeded in 2022, with Bytedance (the Chinese operator of TikTok) topping the list with a valuation of 140 billion dollars.

Our funds indirectly accompany the growth of these European unicorns through, for example, Eurazeo, a leading worldwide investment group with close to 27 billion euros in assets under management. The group currently holds stakes in 11 out of the 26 French unicorns, including Back Market, Doctolib and ManoMano.

Looking beyond financing, the challenge is to accompany the development of these companies in order to help them become world leaders.

Eurazeo is also involved with unicorns outside of France such as PPRO, a UK company active in payment services, and Pat McGrath Labs, a US makeup company.

Through our investment in Ströer, a German outdoor advertising specialist, we have exposure to the growth of two German unicorns, Statista and Asam Beauty. Statista is an online market statistics and data portal that is 100% owned by Ströer. With the largest technology companies included in its diversified client base, Statista is currently the leading statistics portal worldwide. Statista has a subscription-based model and expects to generate 250 million euros in revenues in 2025 (versus 100 million euros expected in 2021). Asam Beauty is on online cosmetics sales specialist that is 51% owned by Ströer. The group is leader in the German-speaking region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and is in the process of expanding internationally (France, Poland, United States and China). Ströer expects Asam Beauty to generate 140 million euros in revenues in 2021. These two companies have posted impressive growth over recent years against a backdrop of accelerated digitalisation in numerous sectors and Ströer has expressed its desire to crystallise the value of its two jewels by selling them or listing them on the market.

Numerous unicorns are going public.

We could cite for example a unicorn that has become of the largest listed European stocks: Adyen, a Dutch payments specialist with a stock market capitalisation of 56 billion euros that is held by our funds.

We are continuing to examine stock market introductions in order to discover new business models and companies with “unique” profiles present in growth and innovation niches. We nevertheless remain attentive to the valuation levels of these young companies in connection with their IPOs and their levels of profitability, often preferring indirect exposure through groups such as Eurazeo and Ströer.

The rise of European unicorns

Dernières Actualités