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Ageras, a Danish FinTech company, raises €82 million to fuel its expansion plans.

April 30, 2024
2 Min Reads

In an attempt to accelerate its worldwide expansion, Danish FinTech Ageras recently completed an oversubscribed private placement round, successfully raising €82 million.

Significant involvement from prominent investors, such as the American asset management Lazard, the Norwegian state pension fund Folketrygdfondet, and the round leader Investcorp, marked the financing round, which surpassed expectations.

 

Rico Andersen, the CEO of Ageras, expressed delight about the result, saying it furthers the company's goal to "become market leader and then go public."

 

The company was first established in 2012 as an online marketplace that linked small companies with bookkeepers and accountants. It has developed into a full-fledged FinTech enterprise over the years, providing cloud-based accounting software to more than 300,000 active small companies in Europe.

 

Ageras, which employs about 250 people, has made a name for itself in the European FinTech market.

 

With the €82 million raised, Ageras has completed its largest financing round to date. Andersen said that there was excessive interest from both new and current investors, as seen by the oversubscription of the round.

 

Remarkably, Investcorp committed around half of the financing together with founders and current investors. The investor portfolio was further reinforced by new investors, including American asset management Lazard and the Norwegian state pension fund Folketrygdfondet.

 

Using the additional funds, Ageras plans to quicken the pace of its acquisition strategy in an effort to improve its product line and increase its market share throughout Europe.

 

According to Andersen, "We want to make it easier for small businesses to operate in an increasingly complex administrative and regulatory environment by providing a fully integrated platform that allows them to manage their tax, accounting, and banking in a single financial cockpit."

 

"M&A is a crucial component of our strategy, whereby we have purchased technology and so extended our offering faster than if we developed everything from scratch, in order to execute on that goal faster. We now see an appealing pipeline of possible acquisitions developing, and the ones that catch our attention fully align with our vision and objective, which is to dominate the market before going public. As a result, we have put together an incredible team of investors and are currently funding the "war chest."

 

Even after declaring in 2023 that more funding was not required, Ageras took advantage of the favorable market conditions to carry on with its acquisition binge.

 

The firm intends to use the funds to expand its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to €100 million, with a primary emphasis on its key markets, which include the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and France. This audacious goal lays the groundwork for prospective future initiatives, such as an IPO.

 

Gilbert Kamieniecky, Head of Private Equity Europe at Investcorp, reflected on Ageras' development trajectory and expressed confidence in the strategic future of the firm. "We are still impressed with Ageras' growth and strategic development since our first investment in 2017," he stated. We are thrilled to spearhead this investment round in order to facilitate future accretive M&A in order to increase market share and the product portfolio.

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