The main SME protagonist
According to ASCRI, 74% of the transactions were small, involving less than €1 million in capital; nearly 4% were mid-market transactions; and only three transactions exceeded €100 million. It is important to note that 90.71 per cent were transactions involving less than 5 million euros in capital, which shows that the recipients of venture capital were, above all, Spanish SMEs in the start-up and expansion phases.
“Although large transactions are carried out by foreign funds, the increase in investment activity in high-growth SMEs provides a good outlook for the future. We believe it is also very important that investments are focused on specific business sectors where Spain should excel in the future as it has done in the past, comments Diego Gutierrez, an SME financing specialist at Abra Invest.
The number of early-stage transactions has also been significant (36% of total transactions, although this only represents a total investment volume of €75.6M). Some transactions Venture Capital highlights of the year 2013 were those of Adara and Neotec (and other international investors) in Alien Vault (IT security), Ysios Capital and Caixa Capital Risc (and other international investors) in Stat Diagnóstica, Axis and CCMP in Volotea, Seaya Ventures in Plenummedia and Subtract it, Ysios Capital in VCRX and Telefónica Ventures in Box.
A total investment of €1,701m for 462 investments
€1,701 million across 462 transactions, representing a fall of 31% in volume and 15% in the number of transactions compared with activity in 2012. We are therefore still a long way from pre-crisis levels of activity, which stood at over 3,000–4,000 million euros. International funds accounted for 51% of the volume invested in 2013, with 14 transactions (involving 23 operators).