Tag: Finance

A CBInsights Report: The Most Well-Funded Tech Startups In Europe

Read the original report here.

  • The top-funded startup in Europe is global communications company OneWeb in the UK, with almost $3.5B in total disclosed equity funding.
  • Rounding out the top 3 most well-funded startups in the region are online payments service provider Klarna in Sweden ($1.1B in disclosed equity funding) and mobile banking platform N26 in Germany ($683M).
  • Eight of the 37 companies featured in our map are unicorns, with disclosed valuations of $1B+ (all tracked in real time on the CB Insights global unicorn club tracker). These unicorns are: Klarna ($5.5B valuation, Sweden), N26 ($3.5B, Germany), BlaBlaCar ($1.6B, France), Vinted ($1.1B, Lithuania), Acronis ($1B, Switzerland), Glovo ($1B, Spain), OutSystems ($1B, Portugal), and Bolt ($1B, Estonia).
  • The region is home to 16 countries whose most well-funded tech startup has raised over $100M in equity funding. Only OneWeb and Klarna have raised more than $1B+ in equity funding.
  • The least well-funded startup on the map is Serbia-based data analysis tool Content Insights, which has raised $3.6M.
  • Since our last update of this map in April, only 1 featured startup has exited: Switzerland-based Veeam Software, which was acquired by VC firm Insight Partners in January 2020 at a valuation of $5B+.
Source: CBInsights
STARTUP CONTINENT: THE MOST WELL-FUNDED TECH STARTUPS IN EUROPE
Company Country  Total Equity Funding ($M)
OneWeb United Kingdom 3469
Klarna Sweden 1122
N26 Germany 683
Glovo Spain 513
BlaBlaCar France 449
OutSystems Portugal 422
Picnic Netherlands 329
Vinted Lithuania 260
RELEX Solutions Finland 222
AMCS Group Ireland 202
Trustpilot Denmark 179
Acronis Switzerland 178
Bolt Estonia 177
Tricentis Austria 174
DocPlanner Group Poland 137
Odoo Belgium 104
Job Today Luxembourg 81
ivi Russian Federation 81
Kolonial.no Norway 61
AImotive Hungary 51
Satispay Italy 50
Mews Systems Czech Republic 42
PDFfiler Ukraine 30
Lidyana Turkey 25.17
Capital.com Cyprus 25
Netdata Greece 21
Software Group Bulgaria 17
FintechOS Romania 16
Gambling.com Group Malta 16
Banuba Belarus 12
Minit Slovakia 11
TripCreator Iceland 10
Gjirafa Albania 8.7
Mintos Latvia 7.8
Gideon Brothers Croatia 5.7
Eligma Slovenia 4.4
Content Insights Serbia 3.6

「News of the Week」Tesla, $968.99/share

Financial Times – Tesla shares surge again despite Saudi Arabian exit

  • Tesla made the company the world’s second-largest carmaker by market value.
  • The stock rose as much as 24.2 per cent to $968.99 about 12 minutes out from the closing bell, closing at $887.06.
  • The stock has more than doubled since the start of the year.
  • The stock notched their most actively traded day on Feb 4, with ~61 million volume.
  • Tesla reported a $105 million profit for 19Q4 the week before
  • Short squeeze – On top of the record dollar loss of $5.8bn in January, short-sellers lost a further $3.2bn as the extraordinary share price rally accelerated on the first day’s trading of the new month.
  • Tesla’s recent delivery from its Shanghai factory to the China market added to the enthusiasm. It is the first fully foreign-owned car plant in the country.

「News of the Week」China’s Amended Securities Law

Reuters – China sets out move to liberalize IPO rules to streamline listings

Caixin – China Approves New Securities Law with Registration-Based IPO System

The amended legislation, due to take effect from March 1, removes complex and time-consuming watchdog scrutiny before listings and is designed to expand registration-based IPOs.

Th requirement for a company to qualify for a new listing is lowered to being “capable of sustainable business operations,” from the previous more stringent “capable of sustained profitability.”

The revised law adds a new chapter on information disclosure.

it also contains provision for heavier punishment on stocks violations and pledges better protection for investors in general.

Dots to connect: fees for investment banks, stock performance for financial services companies, increasing power of exchanges, dropping value of “shell companies”, growing value of indexes, etc..

「Video of the Week」David Rubenstein Conversation With BlackStone Chairman & CEO Stephen Schwarzman

MIT’s new college of computing was formed on Sep 11 2019, enabled by Schwarzman’s $350 million donation.

And Schwarzman’s new book is out – What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence

「News of the Week」Japan’s New Internet Giant

WSJ – Yahoo Japan and Chat App Line Agree to Merge

SoftBank’s announcement

As part of the deal, SoftBank Group subsidiary SoftBank Corp. and Naver said they would buy all the shares in Line not already owned by Naver at ¥5,200 ($47.78) a share. Naver owns 72.6% of Line as of Monday. SoftBank Corp. and Naver will pay ¥170 billion ($1.56 billion) each to buy those Line shares, SoftBank said.

Line Pay has 37 million users and PayPay, operated jointly by SoftBank and Yahoo Japan, has 19 million. (Nikkei)

Source: WSJ, Bloomberg

Dots to connect: competitions in ads, e-commerce, payment in Japan, monetization on 82 million Line MAU, Japan moving to cash-less, SoftBank’s consolidated financial performance, new superapp, etc.

「What’s News In China」

Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals (Green Valley, 绿谷制药) today announced on Nov 2 that China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved Oligomannate (GV-971) as new drug for the treatment of “mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and improving cognitive function.” It is the first novel drug approved for Alzheimer’s disease globally since 2003. The company is also planning a global phase 3 trial with sites in the U.S., Europe and other parts of Asia in early 2020 to support regulatory filings around the world. // prnewswire | fiercepharma

On Nov 5, Nio (NASDAQ: NIO), long being seen as the Tesla in China, announced its partnership with Intel’s Mobileye to build self-driving EVs. Under the planned collaboration, Mobileye will provide NIO with the design of the self-driving system building on the Mobileye AV Series, a L4 AV kit comprised of the Mobileye EyeQ® system-on-chip, hardware, driving policy, safety software and mapping solution. NIO will take on the automotive-grade engineering, integration and mass-production of Mobileye’s system for both consumer automotive markets and for Mobileye’s mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) applications. In addition to integrating the self-driving system into its vehicle lines, NIO will develop a specially configured variant of electric AVs that Mobileye will use as robotaxis, deployed for ride-hailing services in global markets. // TechCrunch| intel

36Kr (NASDAQ: KRKR), a Beijing-based news and data provider, known for tracking fundraising and tech related news in China, raised $20 million in its Friday debut on NASDAQ. The company is similar to TechCrunch or Crunchbase (its affiliated Crunchbase News). // Crunchbase News

Meituan: Fighting Every War

The current Meituan (MeituanDianping) came from a merger between Meituan and Dianping in December 2015.

Once a company invested by Alibaba, Meituan has become more closer with Tencent after the merger.

At the beginning of 2016, MeituanDianping raised $3.3 billion from Tencent, DST Global and Temasek at a $15 billion pre-money valuation; meanwhile, Alibaba sold its stake for ~$900 million in the same month.

Later that year, in April 2016, Alibaba invested the $900 million in Ele.me and Ant Financial invested $350 million.

The war has already changed from Yelp and Groupon to more comprehensive areas – restaurants and other local services.

[Note – in 2014, Priceline (now Booking.com) agreed to buy restaurant booking service OpenTable for about $2.6 billion in cash. But in China, dining is not exactly scheduled by time but by getting a number into the line, determined by how many people are ahead of you.]

However, US and China are similar in the world of food delivery. Meituan and Ele.me are fighting in China while Uber Eats, DoorDash, GrubHub, PostMates are fighting in the US. The difference – China uses e-bikes and US uses cars.

And for other services like movies, Meituan spun-off Maoyan in 2016. Maoyan is competing with Tao Piaopiao, which raised ¥1.7 billion in 2016.

In the US, the market is led by Fandango and Atom Tickets. But the market is not limited to movies – it’s about all kinds of shows, concerts and exhibitions.

Meituan is also offering hotel & travel bookings, fighting in the war with Ctrip.

Going back to Meituan, it raised $4 billion in October 2017 from Tencent, Sequoia, GIC and Tiger Global.

Meituan Dianping introduced its ride-hailing operation Meituan Dache in February 2018.

In April 2018, Alibaba acquired Ele.me for $9.5 billion.

Same week , Meituan acquired mobike for $2.7 billion.

Later that month, Ant Financials led a round of $700 million for Hellobike.

Meituan went for IPO in Hong Kong in September 2018, raising $4.2 billion.

Another OTA, Tongcheng-Elong, with Tencent and Ctrip as major shareholders, went IPO in Hong Kong in November 2018, raising $180 million.

Summing up the wars Meituan is in:

  • Food delivery: with Alibaba’s Ele.me; same-day delivery: Dada-JD Daojia
  • Movie tickets: with Alibaba’s Tao Piaopiao
  • Ride-hailing: with Didi
  • Bike-sharing: with Hellobike and Didi Bike (Qingju)
  • Hotel and travel booking: with Ctrip
  • Payment & wallet
  • …

SoftBank Group Earnings Presentation: WeWork Impacts, 60% Discount, Best Deal In Alibaba

SoftBank Group’s presentation gives a fairly good illustration of what the group is holding, the loss on book due to WeWork and the turnaround plan for it.

The presentation talks a lot about WeWork, but it’s Alibaba that contributes/matters the most right now. Nearly half of ($123 billion out of the $256 billion) its equity values of holding comes from Alibaba.

And given SoftBank Group’s market cap ~$80 billion now, it is a very good source of Alibaba exposure even without hedge (personally I think other holdings are also okay).

The turnaround plan relies a lot on higher occupancy rates and cost cuttings as WeWork manage the properties longer.

Here is the presentation.

New Rankings For Chinese Internet Companies (Nov 1, 2019)

The word BAT seems to be the past, as AT (Alibaba & Tencent) have evolved into bigger ecosystems and entered into the league of $400 billion market cap club.

  • Alibaba market cap $459.43 billion
    • CYQ2 – Revenue was RMB114,924 million, an increase of 42% year-over-year (just reported CYQ3 revenue RMB119,017 million)
  • Tencent market cap $396.57 billion
    • CYQ2 – Total revenues were RMB88,821 million, an increase of 21% year-over-year.

Other internet companies, including Baidu, are in another league. Ranked by market cap:

  • Meituan market cap HK$543.24 billion, ~$69 billion
    • CYQ2 – Total revenues increased by 50.6% year-over-year to RMB22.7 billion (Total Gross Transaction Volume (GTV) on our platform grew by 28.7% to RMB 159.2 billion)
  • Pinduoduo market cap $48.23 billion
    • CYQ2 – Total revenues in the quarter were RMB7,290.0 million, an increase of 169%
  • JD.com market cap $45.78 billion
    • Net revenues for the second quarter of 2019 were RMB150.3 billion, an increase of 22.9% from the second quarter of 2018 (JD uses traditional retail model that takes inventory, so revenue includes value of goods sold)
  • Baidu market cap $36.47 billion
    • CYQ2 – Total revenues reached RMB 26.3 billion, increasing 1% year over year, or 6% year over year, excluding the impact of announced divestures

Also, private companies such as ByteDance is also in this league.

Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway Co.,Ltd. IPO Filing

The most lucrative segment of China’s high speed railway system filed it IPO application with CSRC.

It announced its preparation of IPO back in February.

The 1,318km railway began construction in April 2008 and started operation in June 2011.

2019 (Jan – Sep) 2018 2017 2016
Passenger Revenue (‘0000 ¥) 1,204,204.99 1,579,069.55 1,556,737.53 1,418,926.44
PassengerMiles (billion km) 25.86 34.46 34.24 31.83
Unit Price (¥ per km) 0.466 0.458 0.455 0.446
Occupancy % 79.91% 81.64% 80.18% 73.38%

Unit price is consistent with experiences, e.g. Nanjing South to Shanghai Hongqiao is ~295km and costs ¥134.5, which translates to ¥0.456 per km in unit price.

For occupancy rate, there is some seasonality fluctuation (Jan – Sep vs. Oct – Dec).

Total revenue breakdown:

Income Statement:

Profitability is insane.

Total Revenue (‘0000) 2,500,191.65 3,115,842.16 2,955,540.94 2,625,761.72
COGS (‘0000) 1,185,571.50 1,629,918.30 1,593,526.42 1,514,366.73
Gross Margin 53% 48% 46% 42%
Net Income (‘0000) 1,269,335.26 1,366,419.72 1,207,143.13 902,434.75
NI Margin 51% 44% 41% 34%