Copenhagen-based Ageras, a fintech company that provides accounting software to European small businesses, announced that it has raised €82M in an oversubscribed private placement round.
To date, the company has raised €200M in funding.
Who backed?
The two founders and Investcorp, along with other existing investors, have accounted for approximately 50 per cent of the round.
New investors, such as the Norwegian state pension fund Folketrygdfondet and the American asset manager Lazard, have also participated.
Ageras’ CEO, Rico Andersen, confirms that negotiations are already underway with potential acquisition targets.
Additionally, the Danish fintech company has become profitable in 2023.
Birth of Ageras
In 2010, Rico Andersen and Martin Hegelund founded Få Det Gjort, an online platform for household services. They invested their childhood savings and a bank loan into the project.
After making a lot of mistakes, they realised that they needed a different accounting setup. They sold Få Det Gjort and founded Ageras, a group of companies with a vision to enable success for small businesses.
“We want to make it easier to be a small business in an increasingly difficult administrative and regulatory landscape by offering a fully integrated platform where companies can manage their banking, accounting, and tax in one financial cockpit”, says Rico Andersen
Ageras: Provides accounting software
Ageras was founded in 2012 as an online marketplace matching small businesses with accountants and bookkeepers, however, has today grown into a fintech company with approximately 250 employees and a comprehensive cloud-based software product.
By integrating its solutions into a single cockpit for invoicing, accounting, payroll, banking, and finance, the Danish platform enables business owners to focus on running their business.
Despite stating that it did not require further funding towards the end of 2023, the company has found the current market conditions favourable to continue its acquisition strategy and offer new features to its growing customer base in Denmark, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
“To deliver faster on that vision, M&A is an integral part of our strategy, where we have acquired technology and thus expanded our product faster than if we built everything from scratch. Currently, we see an attractive pipeline of potential acquisitions emerging, and the ones we eye reinforce our vision and goal 100%; to become a market leader and then go public. Therefore, we have assembled a dream team of investors and are filling up the ‘war chest’ right now”, continues Rico Andersen
Andersen also reported that Ageras achieved positive EBITDA for the first time in 2023, ending the fiscal year with a record-high ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue, edt.) of €41M compared to €27M in 2022.
The company aims to increase its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to €100M, after which it may consider an IPO.
The investor
Investcorp is a global investment manager specialising in alternative investments across private equity, real estate, credit, absolute return strategies, GP stakes, infrastructure, strategic capital, and insurance asset management.
“We remain impressed with the growth and strategic development of Ageras since our first investment in 2017. Therefore, we are excited to lead this investment round which enables more accretive M&A to expand the product offering and gain market share”, says Gilbert Kamieniecky, Head of Private Equity Europe at Investcorp.
01
From port to startup fort: How Lars Crama is ‘Making it Happen’ in Rotterdam