“It hasn't been an easy year. The market reality has changed. Investors ask us for efficiency and a year ago they asked us for growth,” summarizes Jordi Romero, co-founder of Factorial, one of the unicorn companies in Barcelona, valued at more than 1,000 million euros.
Like Factorial, the rest of the unicorns in the Spanish digital ecosystem have experienced a paradigm shift since mid-2022, when interest rates rose and the furor for the digital business faded after the pandemic. This paradigm shift has implied austerity in spending and cuts in employment. In the case of Factorial, around thirty people were fired and now they are working to stabilize the workforce, made up of a thousand people. In Barcelona, the most notable were the layoffs at Wallbox (-15% of the workforce) and Glovo (-6.5%). They are two companies that achieved unicorn status but have already lost it due to not having met investors' expectations. Wallbox has suffered the slowdown in the electric car market, while Glovo has experienced the drop in delivery after the pandemic.
With Glovo and Wallbox having lost their unicorn status, and Factorial holding up (the company hopes that the situation improves to obtain capital and a new valuation), only Travelperk remains as the banner of the Barcelona unicorn club. The company has just revalidated its valuation of 1,280 million euros in a new investment round in which it has raised 95 million euros. In fact, another historical unicorn born in Barcelona, the eDreams travel platform, is also listed with a capitalization of less than 1,000 million euros.
In Madrid, Cabify and Jobandalent have held their own in recent months, without carrying out any mass layoffs of staff. The transport platform raised 70 million euros at the beginning of last year to continue accelerating its business and presented annual results in which turnover increased by 32% in 2022, comfortably exceeding 600 million euros. Jobandtalent's latest results (for 2022) also show the strength of the business, with turnover soaring by 90% annually, to 1.9 billion euros. Idealista, considered a unicorn by some experts, is also recording growth figures, taking advantage of the momentum in the real estate sector.
All of the companies mentioned here remain in losses despite the demands of investors, who in mid-2022 already began to demand profits before growth at all costs. “They ask us for efficiency and we are all working to achieve it,” says Romero, who prefers not to give Factorial's business figures.
The paradigm shift has also caused the creation of unicorn companies to plummet. In Spain, it has been more than a year and a half since any company valued at more than 1,000 million has appeared. The last one was Factorial, in October 2022, a year and three months ago. It is not an isolated phenomenon. At a global level, statistics show that creation is at its lowest levels since five years ago. In 2023 as a whole, only 107 were created, compared to 348 in 2022 or 622 in 2021, according to the Pitchbook portal. These levels have not been recorded since 2017.
And as for 2024, the data reflects that the digital ecosystem has not started in the best way. According to this portal, which collects data from around the world, barely 10 unicorn companies have been created, compared to the 14 that were generated in 2023 or the 49 in 2022. Until the funds abandon prudence, everything indicates that these figures will continue to be at a minimum.
