An ironic and accurate saying is often heard on stock market floors. “It's always a bad time to go public.” Because when getting into this financial adventure, drawbacks can appear from one moment to the next and are difficult to foresee. Obstacles are easy to find. At most the risks can be minimized. However, when it comes time, you have to go for it.
Ebury has decided to cross the Rubicon. She has announced that she will step on the hardwood. A valuation close to 2,000 million euros is expected. It will be listed in 2025 as a unicorn (exceeding the level of 1,000 million) and will be one of the most valued Spanish firms in this category.
To convince investors, this company offers its own seductive arguments.
Fifteen years after two engineers, Juan Lobato and Salvador García, decided to set up a digital company in London to advise SMEs in their foreign trade activities (payments, collections, currency exchanges), Ebury has just achieved in the fiscal year which ended its first gross profit last April, an ebitda of 16 million pounds – 19 million euros – (compared to losses of 34.1 million the previous year).
Furthermore, as a business card, the firm invoices more than 230 million euros, with an annual growth rate that exceeds 80%, and carries out transactions for more than 29,000 million euros each year, relying on a portfolio of 20,000 clients.
Ebury can now say it has gone global. Operate with 140 currencies. It has 40 offices spread across 25 countries (including the headquarters in Prague, Dublin, Stockholm, Santiago de Chile, Montreal and Shenzhen), with a total workforce of around 1,800 employees.
The turning point for Ebury took place between 2019 and 2020, when Banco Santander acquired 54% of the capital in two phases, with an investment of 400 million euros at that time. Financial and reputational support that has sustained the growth of this company throughout this last period and that has helped them expand their client portfolio.
Catalonia represents a strategic market in Spain (it accounts for more than 20% of its turnover in the country), but its strategic commitment for years is Andalusia, specifically Malaga, where they have a training center with 300 employees.
Is all this enough to win over investors?
To answer the question, we spoke with Duarte Lebanon Monteiro, general director of southern Europe at Ebury.
“I think it is a good time. Interest rates will go down in the coming months. And the company is growing, both in business and geographically,” she says. At a time when autonomous regions compete to attract talent and be competitive, this executive defends the commitment that was made at the time for Malaga. “We received a lot of help. The City Council made a bet and today the city has become a technological and talent attraction hub,” he says.
Ebury was born to advise SMEs, which are sometimes unprepared when it comes to going abroad. “We are more agile than traditional banks, which also tend to operate with few currencies,” says Lebanon Monteiro. “We do not sell them technology, but rather products and services with technological methods.”
The company has a strong presence in Latin America, which is a region that is a source of problems from an exchange point of view. Just think of Venezuela or Argentina. “But it is not only this, it is capital control and the regulatory body. “We have the knowledge on the ground.”
Give some example of how opening an account in a local currency can provide some advantage with suppliers, as is the case in the United States, or vice versa, runs the risk of harming the company's income statements (for example in Brazil). . Likewise, submitting to a public tender in Colombia with a budget in euros or pesos can affect the final costs. It depends on each country. “Welcome to the emerging world,” this executive jokes.
When talking about currencies, Duarte Lebanon Monteiro does not believe, as some analysts speculate, that the supremacy of the dollar is in danger. It is true that international exchanges in renminbi have grown a lot in recent years, but “foreign investments in China have been negative in 2023 for the first time,” he recalls. “In addition, many raw materials, from steel to cotton, are priced in dollars.” A leadership, that of the greenback, difficult to dethrone.
