As with football, there is also a first and second division in the stock market. There are the large companies, which are listed on the continuous market and, in the case of the largest, do so on the Ibex, and then there are the SMEs, whose shares are exchanged on contracting platforms for growing companies, a kind of ritual. of stock market initiation to attract investors without subjecting themselves to excessive demands. Also like in football, the latter aspire to rise in category.
The two major platforms for this second stock market division are BME Growth and Euronext. The first plays at home because its owner, BME, despite being owned by the Swiss group Six, is the operator of the Madrid and Barcelona Stock Exchange. The second is in the opposite field, but it is the European leader and manages the Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Dublin stock exchanges. It also has a more technological focus, prides itself on giving access to international investors and this year it scored a goal for BME by incorporating Ferrovial, which also continues to be listed in Spain.
In this 2023 of stock market drought in the continuous market, BME Growth has added eight growing companies to its listing. They are Greening, Ktesios, Indexa Capital, Vanadi Coffee, Revenga, Milepro, Miciso and, above all, Cox Energy, the brand new winner of Abengoa's assets. The stock market harvest contrasts with the 16 companies in 2022 and the 17 in 2021.
BME sources describe the rate of arrival of SMEs to Growth as “strong” thanks to its incorporation and maintenance requirements, and costs “tailored” to SMEs. There these companies achieve “visibility and access to an investment community that is increasingly specialized in this type of projects.” The outstanding student of BME Growth is MásMóvil, which started in this quarry to jump to the continuous market and reach the Ibex before its purchase by several funds.
From BME, they allude to the “diversification of financing sources” as a good reason to go public, even more so now that interest rates have increased. “With the sharp rise in the price of money experienced in the last year, there is once again a reactivation in plans to go public,” the operator states. Visibility, notoriety, brand image, liquidity and attracting talent are other elements in favor.
Apart from BME Growth, where 139 SMEs are already listed, the Spanish operator has more recently created the BME Scaleup, for companies with less development, and has a fixed income debt market, the Marf, for smaller projects.
Its competitor Euronext has also managed to take eight Spanish companies to its markets, so there is a tie. BME can claim that it has one, Iflex, in the middle of the incorporation phase, but the truth is that the European rival is giving it tough competition. So far this year, the technology companies Mutter, Virtualware, Riba Mundo, Nortem Biogroup and QEV Technologies have joined their markets from Spain, in addition to the Socimis Ok Business, Montepino Logística and Astickso XXI.
The director of Euronext in Spain, Susana de Antonio, highlights its platform's "technological and international profile", which allows Spanish SMEs dedicated to innovation to access specialized and foreign investors. “Listing on Euronext raises the profile of the company” and “a change of nationality is not necessary,” she explains.
Their perception, and this applies to companies listed in the first division, is that there is renewed interest in IPOs because “it seems that interest rates are not going to rise much more.” Furthermore, “the fear of recession dissipates” and “there is a scenario of greater normalization” after a 2022 marked by the invasion of Ukraine.
Euronext has a specific company acquisition plan called IPO Ready, in which it invites any company willing to listen to it, without needing to be interested in making the jump to the stock market. The technique must work because the European platform already has fifty Spanish companies listed on its markets, among which are the Catalan telecom operator Lleida.net, the fintech Allfunds or the technology company Facephi, apart from a piece of big game, Ferrovial.
