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Permira-backed TeamViewer defies European IPO drought

PE-backed software company TeamViewer has announced plans to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange by the end of the year. The offering could be one of Germany’s largest listings since 2017, with the expected valuation said to be between €4 billion and €5 billion (between around $4.4 billion and $5.5 billion).

Based in the city of Göppingen, TeamViewer develops a platform for online meetings and remote desktop access that has been installed on over 2 billion devices. Last year, the company reportedly generated sales of €230 million and EBITDA of €121 million.

Permira bought the business in 2014 for a reported €870 million from GFI Software. The PE firm is anticipated to sell between 30% and 40% of its shares, according to the Financial Times, but is said to be retaining its position as a majority stakeholder. Permira was reportedly approached by Hellman & Friedman and Vista Equity Partners in 2017, with each firm offering separate bids of some $2 billion to acquire TeamViewer.

If successful, the listing bucks a trend that has seen a significant drop in European IPOs. According to data from PitchBook, public offerings on the continent are at their lowest levels in nearly a decade. So far this year, 106 European companies have gone public compared with 311 last year. What’s more, very few of the companies that debuted on the markets this year raised large amounts of cash.

Only three businesses from the continent have broken the €1 billion mark in eight months. The largest IPO came courtesy of Italian lender Nexi, which priced its shares at €9 apiece to raise more than €2 billion in April. Europe’s second-biggest listing of the year saw Volkswagen’s truck and bus unit Traton make its stock market debut at €27 per share which brought in €1.55 billion. The final company that raised at least €1 billion is Trainline, the developer of a platform offering train and bus tickets. The KKR-backed business secured £951 million (around $1.2 billion at the time) by floating in London.

Some European businesses have avoided the markets altogether or backed out of scheduled IPOs. In July, Swiss Re pulled plans to list its UK life insurance arm ReAssure, which could have given the business a market cap of up to £3.3 billion. The group cited weak demand and heightened caution as its reasons, suggesting that certain political events may play a role in IPO suspension.

Of course, Brexit gets some of the blame, especially in the UK, but political uncertainty may not be the only reason for the lackluster demand for IPOs. Considering share price performance, European businesses haven’t been the best performers when going public. Traton’s stock has pretty much been on a downward spiral since the company’s June IPO—closing Wednesday at just over €22 per share—while Nexi’s stock fell a reported 6.2% on its first day. And we all know the debacles that were the Aston Martin and Funding Circle listings.

Still, there is hope that if it is executed, TeamViewer’s public debut will fare better than some of its peers, with its profitability and the attractiveness of the software market.

 

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Which US companies had the biggest valuation jumps in 2019?

Valuation step-ups in the private market continue to be one of the crucial indicators in evaluating the overall health of the venture landscape, especially as companies raise bigger and bigger rounds and strive to meet investor expectations. In 2Q, VC-backed companies in the US pulled in more than $25 billion for the sixth consecutive quarter, and many of those rounds came with lofty valuation gains.

Through the first half of the year, valuation growth has been strong in the US, according to our latest VC Valuations Report, with late-stage valuations reaching new heights. In addition, the median early-stage valuation step-up multiples (a comparison of a company’s latest pre-money valuation to its previous round’s post-money valuation) have been on the rise since 2016, and in 1H 2019, they surpassed 2.0x for the first time in at least a decade.

Here’s a look at the VC-backed companies that have seen the biggest valuation jumps in 2019, including those with the largest valuation step-up multiples from one round to the next, as well as those that have seen the largest gains in their post-valuations. Data is sourced from the PitchBook Platform; click on the images below to see a larger version of the graphic.

Largest valuation jumps by step-up multiple

 

 

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Station F: A symbol of France’s startup ambitions

Two years ago, the French people elected Emmanuel Macron as their 25th president. His pro-business policies and visions of transforming the slow-moving state into a European powerhouse of innovation helped make him the youngest leader of the nation. Sensing change in the air, Station F, which is said to be the world’s largest startup campus, launched in Paris to represent France’s tech renaissance.

Based in Paris’ 13th arrondissement, or district, Station F sits in an unused rail depot said to span the length of the Eiffel Tower. It is home to over 1,000 startups and offers incubator programs run by companies including Facebook, L’Oréal and Microsoft.

In addition to its working spaces, event areas and restaurant, Station F launched a co-living space in June. The space is the largest of its kind in Europe, according to the company, with the capacity to house 600 startup founders and employees. All of these elements combined have reportedly attracted a steady stream of tech juggernauts like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as French dignitaries.

Perhaps a surprise to some, Station F is a private sector initiative rather than government-backed. It’s owned by Xavier Niel, the founder of telecommunications provider Illiad and international seed investor Kima Ventures. Having a high-profile backer is surely a huge benefit for Station F’s startups, especially when it comes to raising money. Several Station F businesses have secured millions of euros from investors.

Team Vitality reportedly landed a €20 million (around $22 million) investment from entrepreneur Tej Kohli in November; the esports company was developed under the tutelage of Naver, a South Korean search engine provider. In February, co-living space provider Colonies received €11 million in a round that included Idinvest Partners and Kima, per reports. And in April, cybersecurity company Alsid, which is part of aerospace giant Thales Group’s program, raised €13 million in a round led by Idinvest Partners.

 

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Fans at crisis club Bury turn out to clean up their stadium

Bury have been given until 5pm on Tuesday to secure their future, with current owner Steve Dale in talks with data analytics company C&N Sporting Risk over a potential takeover.

However, EFL executive chair Debbie Jevans has suggested that deadline could be extended if only “one per cent” of the deal remains to be completed.

Volunteers have been arriving at Gigg Lane this morning to help after an appeal from the club to help clean up the stadium.

“Whilst the EFL and our potential new owners proceed with their necessary paperwork and dealings, the club needs to prepare the Stadium in order for Saturdays EFL Sky Bet League One clash with Doncaster Rovers to take place.

“With Tuesday’s deadline firmly set, preparations for our first game of the season will commence at 9:00am on Tuesday morning.”

“Recent events, over the summer months, have left the club with just a skeleton staff and we must, therefore, call on voluntary help in order to get the Stadium ready.”

– Bury FC

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IWG may launch US IPO, extending co-working space growth frenzy

International Workplace Group is considering an IPO in New York for its US-based operations, according to Sky News. Such a spinoff could reportedly be worth up to £3 billion (about $3.67 billion), nearly equal to IWG’s £3.64 billion (about $4.45 billion) market cap as of August 26. The company did not immediately respond to PitchBook’s request for comment.

The news came less than two weeks after WeWork released its S-1 document August 14, revealing 1H 2019 losses of over $900 million while holding a footprint comparable to IWG’s. As a result, IWG’s consideration of an IPO is perhaps a direct response to WeWork’s advance, evidenced by IWG’s insistence of only considering underwriters that are not involved with WeWork’s IPO, again per Sky News.

IWG isn’t the only player in this space making moves after WeWork’s S-1 reveal.

On Thursday, New York-based Industrious reeled in $80 million from Brookfield Property Partners and fitness club provider Equinox, among others. CEO Jamie Hodari expects the company to be profitable within a “few months,” according to Reuters. On Wednesday, New York-based Knotel announced it had pulled in $400 million at an over $1 billion valuation in a round led by Wafra.

Lesser-known competitors, such as The Yard, Convene, BHIVE Workspace, Alley, and The Wing, also stand to possibly beef up their game as WeWork’s IPO plays out.

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Despite signs of a potential recession, deal maker sentiment remains optimistic

Recent news about the yield inversion will probably have an effect on investor psyche. Inversions have historically predated recessions by as many as 24 months—one lag in particular (2005-2007) also included a significant rise in the S&P. In four of the last five recessions, the lag between inversion and the start of a recession has lasted at least a year.

It’s a bit different with market corrections, which in two of five cases have begun in three months or less. Another tidbit came earlier this year from Bain & Co.’s Hugh MacArthur, who noted “only three periods historically [where] private multiples generally exceed the public average: during the ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ era of the mid-1980s, during the exuberant runup to the 2008 global financial crisis, and now.”

The sky has been falling for a long time among prognosticators, and the “tea leaves” in the featured chart don’t give us much of a schedule to work with. At PitchBook, we’ve been trying to gauge investor sentiment through our PE Deal Multiples Survey. In our last survey, we asked respondents for their reasons for canceling or renegotiating their most recent transactions. Here are their responses:

Those answers painted an optimistic picture among dealmakers, with only 7% citing negative changes in market fundamentals. The two most-cited responses reflect a strong market—41% said they found adverse information during due diligence and 24% said another buyer swooped in with a better offer.

Even not-that-bad information found during diligence is legitimate grounds to rethink purchase prices. There isn’t a lot of room for error with today’s multiples, and we’ve heard plenty of anecdotes of deals taking upward of 12 months to close. Furthermore, there are lots of buyers trying to put their money to work, so overcautious dealmakers will lose out to higher bidders. Those two reasons accounted for 65% of our results.

We’re curious about your thoughts as dealmakers, and our newest survey is now live. All deal data is kept confidential and isn’t published on our database. Participants receive the full aggregated report and are entered into a $300 Amazon gift card drawing—and everyone gets a candid look of current market sentiment, which may shift in the next month, or year, or two years.

 

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CBS, Viacom enter streaming wars with $30B combination

In the latest example of major consolidation in the media industry, CBS and Viacom have officially agreed to conduct a long-awaited merger, creating a new company called ViacomCBS with a combined market cap of around $30 billion. The deal will merge CBS’s broadcast offerings and the Showtime network with MTV, Comedy Central, the Paramount film studio and other Viacom brands, adding a broad collection of new content to CBS All Access, the network’s existing streaming service.

As consumer tastes have evolved and in-home streaming has emerged as perhaps the dominant entertainment form of our time, many of the industry’s biggest players have turned to M&A to augment their offerings. It’s been a little more than a year since AT&T acquired Time Warner for $85 billion, adding brands like HBO and Turner to its stable. And earlier this year, Disney beat out Comcast to purchase a raft of TV and film assets from 21st Century Fox for approximately $71 billion, making major content additions ahead of the planned launch of its Disney+ streaming service. Disney also took control of Hulu earlier this year, valuing the streaming pioneer at $15 billion.

The newly formed ViacomCBS, though, will be considerably smaller than some of its streaming competition. AT&T and Disney both have market caps of over $240 billion, making them more than 8x the size of ViacomCBS. Netflix carries a market cap of more than $135 billion, even after its stock has slid in recent weeks in the wake of disappointing 2Q results.

The combination of Viacom and CBS has long been rumored, due largely to the very close ties between the two New York-based companies. They were in fact the same company until 2006, when media tycoon Sumner Redstone split them into two entities. Redstone and his National Amusements holding business have maintained control over both Viacom and CBS in the years since, with his daughter Shari Redstone assuming more power in recent years as her father has reportedly battled health issues.

Current Viacom president and CEO Bob Bakish will assume those same roles at the new ViacomCBS, while Joe Ianniello, the acting head of CBS, will remain in charge of CBS-branded assets. Ianniello has been the interim CEO at CBS since longtime leader Leslie Moonves stepped down last September following several allegations of sexual harassment.

 

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The ‘Millennial Walt Disney’ and her Museum of Ice Cream raise $40M

The way Maryellis Bunn tells it, it all began because she was a bored millennial in New York with nothing to do. All the real museums were dry, stodgy, stuck in the 20th century. Bunn decided that a new generation, one that increasingly wants to spend its money on documentable experiences rather than things, needed a new kind of cultural space.

And thus was born the Museum of Ice Cream. What is it? It’s not a museum, and there’s sometimes only a tangential relationship to ice cream. One way to describe the Museum of Ice Cream is as an Instagram-friendly series of art installations designed as a surreal maze of interactive, hyper-visual exhibits—like a giant pool of sprinkles or a room with technicolor popsicles melting from the walls. Another is that it’s a confectionery millennial fever dream, like if you dropped acid before touring the Ben & Jerry’s factory.

Either way, since Bunn and co-founder Manish Vora launched the first Museum of Ice Cream in New York in 2016, the pop-up experiences have become a cultural phenomenon, selling out stints in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in the blink of an eye and drawing visits from celebrities like Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian. And now, Bunn and Vora are capitalizing on that buzz in a serious way: On Wednesday, they launched a new parent company for the Museum of Ice Cream called Figure8, unveiling $40 million in Series A funding at a $200 million valuation. Elizabeth Street Ventures and Maywic Select Investments led the round, with OCV Partners also participating.

Figure8, it seems, will both build on the existing Museum of Ice Cream and expand the ideas behind the pop-up experience into other realms. It plans to open a new Museum of Ice Cream location each quarter, Vora said in a press release announcing the deal. But Figure8 was also created to help respond to what Vora described as “an overwhelming amount of requests from companies asking us to design branded experiums for them.” Corporations want to get in on a concept that’s entranced the prized under-25 demographic.

From the outset, expansion seems to have been in the cards. During a 2017 interview with New York magazine, Bunn (who’s now 27) toured the Museum of Ice Cream’s San Francisco location with reporter Anna Wiener. Afterward, when asked what her “ultimate dream” was, Bunn’s reply was illuminating: “I want to be the next Disney. I could take all of those different installations that we just went through, and I could build them out into city blocks. It would be my Heaven. Could you imagine?”

In its headline accompanying the story, New York described Bunn as “The Millennial Walt Disney.”

The runaway success of the Museum of Ice Cream—it claims more than 1.5 million visitors across its current and prior locations—has inspired a spate of imitators eager to get in on the experience game. In the Big Apple, you can visit the Rosé Mansion, which puts a wine-flavored twist on the idea. There’s also Candytopia, a Wonka-esque space filled with candy-inspired artwork and installations that’s currently touring the US. Its answer to the Museum of Ice Cream’s sprinkle pool is a pit full of marshmallows.

And now, with the creation of Figure8, it seems like more colorful pop-ups with eye-catching concepts designed to pile up the likes on social media may be on the way.

 

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This day in buyout history: Blackstone closes its biggest fund ever—for now

Blackstone is currently raising its eighth flagship private equity fund, a monstrous pool of capital that’s already collected more than $22 billion in commitments and could ultimately total $25 billion, according to reports. When the vehicle closes, it might be the largest in the history of the private equity industry—and it will almost certainly be the biggest fund Blackstone has ever raised.

But for the moment, at least, a different vehicle holds that title. And it’s done so for exactly a dozen years, ever since August 8, 2007, the date the firm announced a final close for Blackstone Capital Partners V on $21.7 billion.

It was auspicious timing for multiple reasons. One was that the fund close came less than two months after Blackstone went public, raising more than $4.1 billion in a closely watched IPO that’s proved to be a transformative event in the firm’s history. Another was that it came shortly before the global economy began to turn, joining a wave of mega-funds that swept across the private equity industry in the months leading up to the financial crisis, including a $20 billion vehicle from Goldman Sachs.

And when you compare Blackstone’s fifth flagship effort with the vehicles that came before and after, it seems clear that the firm got at least a little caught up in the fundraising frenzy. It was a remarkable step-up in size of more than 3x from Blackstone Capital Partners IV, and both the firm’s fifth and sixth funds fell well short of that $21.7 billion figure. That’s contrary to the general industry trend of firms raising more cash for each successive flagship fund, particularly among private equity’s biggest players.

 

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The median PE buyout size in consumer products is heading for a decade high

Private equity’s track record in retail has come under some hefty scrutiny of late. And buyout shops are taking the hint. At just over 40 deals closed through 1H, PE firms are set to complete the fewest retail transactions since at least 2013.

Although the headlines are hard to ignore, it’s important to point out that financial sponsors have also helped brick-and-mortar operations in the middle market with the adoption and expansion of digital strategies. This development has been a boon to retailers. Increased investment in digital technologies has made operations more efficient, boosting sales and blending the customer experience online and off.

As a result, some PE firms are finding bright spots in the still-competitive US consumer market, with many omni-channel businesses not only maintaining margins in the face of secular stagnation, but also commanding higher valuations. This dynamic has contributed to the persistent strength of median deal values even as activity cools off.

 

Digital strategies can provide retailers with valuable metrics on essential data points like customer acquisition costs, which help improve performance. Moreover, marketing campaigns waged across channels have given middle-market retailers an outsized opportunity to track consumers from engagement through purchase in a manner reminiscent of larger rivals. An essential element here has been the swift adoption of direct-to-consumer distribution models by those with a conventional retail presence. Case in point? Cosmetics. And demographics are on their side.

 

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