By Elvira Pollina
MILAN (Reuters) – The head of Italy’s Bending Spoons says Milan is a great location for a start-up but he would probably favour New York were the tech company that owns services such as note-taking tool Evernote and photo editor Remini to list.
The Italian app developer, whose products count 200 million monthly users, is seen as a potential candidate for a public listing after a string of acquisitions this year, including file-sharing service WeTransfer in July.
Chief Executive Officer Luca Ferrari (NYSE:RACE), who co-founded the company in 2013, said there were no firm plans for an initial public offering (IPO) but Bending Spoons was working to be ready for it, and looking beyond Europe.
“If and when we choose to pursue an IPO, we’ll evaluate all reasonable options. Today, we have a slight preference for a listing in the United States, but our views may change,” Ferrari told Reuters in e-mailed comments.
In February, the Milan-based firm completed a funding round which valued it at $2.55 billion and marked it out as a rare unicorn in the Italian tech landscape. A unicorn is an unlisted firm valued at $1 billion or more.
Tech companies often look to list across the Atlantic because of higher valuations that can be attained. A U.S. listing would be a setback for the Milan Stock Exchange after a series of defections.
Limited access to capital and an excess of regulation are among the main constraints facing a company like Bending Spoons in Italy, Ferrari, aged 39, said.
However, Milan provides a good pool of skills, with competition for talent less fierce than elsewhere, he added.
“All in all, I still recommend starting and growing a business in Milan. Were I to start over, I’d favour Milan over many of the cities most commonly associated with entrepreneurship,” he said.
MORE DEALS TO COME?
Bending Spoons, whose name was inspired by a scene in science fiction movie ‘The Matrix’, has a business model centred around revamping and developing the firms and products they acquire.
Ferrari described the strategy as “hybrid” between that of a private equity fund – which he says is the typical rival Bending Spoons competes with when it bids for an asset – and a proper tech company such as Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google.
He said the company had “the focus on acquisitions” of a private equity firm, but added: “we’re engineers and scientists and we spend almost all of our time building technologies and products”.
The WeTransfer deal involved a big restructuring, with 75% off its staff facing being laid off.
Ferrari did not rule out further deals this year, with the company casting its net widely.
“We’ve added around 5,000 companies to our business acquisition pipeline during the past 12 months alone. Naturally, only a handful will prove a suitable target in the end,” he said.
(This story has been refiled to amend the final bullet point)