As with football, in the stock market there is also a first and a second division. There are the large companies, which are listed on the continuous market and which, in the case of the large ones, do so on the Ibex, and then there are the SMEs, whose shares are traded on recruitment platforms for companies in growth, a kind of stock market initiation rite to attract investors without subjecting themselves to excessive demands. Also like in football, the second ones aspire to move up a 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 a shareholder of the Swiss group Six, is the operator of the Madrid and Barcelona Stock Exchanges. The second is in the opposite field, but it is the European leader and controls the stock exchanges of Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Dublin. In addition, it has a more technological approach, it is careful to give access to international investors and this year it has scored a goal for the BME square by incorporating Ferrovial, which also continues to be listed in Spain.
This 2023 stock market drought in the continuous market, BME Growth has incorporated eight growing companies in its listing. They are Greening, Ktesios, Indexa Capital, Vanadi Coffee, Revenga, Milepro, Miciso and, above all, Cox Energy, the brand-new adjudicator of Abengoa's assets. The stock market crop contrasts with the 16 companies in 2022 and the 17 in 2021.
BME sources describe the rate of arrival of SMEs at Growth as "strong" thanks to its incorporation and maintenance requirements, and costs tailored to SMEs. These companies gain "visibility and access to an investment community increasingly specialized in this type of project". The advantaged student of BME Growth is MásMóvil, which started in this seedling, jumped to the continuous market and reached the Ibex before it was bought by several funds.
From BME, they allude to the “diversification of funding sources” as a good reason to go public, even more so now that interest rates have risen. "With the sudden rise in the price of money experienced last year, there is again a reactivation of plans to go public", say the operator. 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 BME Scaleup, for companies with less development and has a fixed income debt market, Marf, for smaller projects.
Its competitor, Euronext, has also managed to bring eight Spanish companies to its markets, with which 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. Since the beginning of the year, the technologies Mutter, Virtualware, Riba Mundo, Nortem Biogroup and QEV Technologies have joined its markets from Spain, in addition to the societies Ok Business, Montepino Logística and Astickso XXI.
The director of Euronext in Spain, Susana de Antonio, highlights her 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", he explains.
His perception, and this applies to companies listed in the first division, is that there is a renewed interest in IPOs because "it seems that interest rates will not rise much more". In addition, "the fear of recession is dissipating" and "there is a scenario of more normalization" after a 2022 marked by the invasion of Ukraine.
Euronext has a specific company recruitment plan called IPO Ready, in which it invites any company willing to listen, without needing to be interested in making the jump to the stock market. The technique must work, because the European platform already has half a hundred Spanish companies listed on its markets, among which are the Catalan telecom operator Lleida.net, the fintech Allfunds or the technological Facephi, apart from a piece of big game, Ferrovial.
