UK private equity firm Black Toro has subscribed a €24.6M capital increase in Torrot Electric, a manufacturer of electric two-wheeled vehicles, and enters into the mobile electric scooter rental company Social Muving for €22M.
About Torrot Electric and Social Muving
Founded in Vitoria in 1948, Torrot Electric is a Spanish company dedicated to the manufacture of electric two-wheeled vehicles. The company, headquartered in Girona since the foundation in 1985 of GasGas (a Torrot Group brand), decided in 2011 to stop manufacturing its trusted and much-loved bicycles and to focus exclusively on designing technologically advanced electric vehicles that fit into today's environmentally friendly world.
Torrot Group has almost 100 years of experience in the sports and mobility sector through its brands Torrot and GasGas. It operates in more than 50 countries, with Spain as its corporate and production base, and with a subsidiary in the USA.
Muving is a company based in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) integrated in a platform specialised in smart mobility that covers different areas: vehicles, traffic management, smart parking, etc. The platform offers an innovative sharing service with electric motorbikes, which allows you to move freely around the city without compulsory insurance or fuel costs. In addition, its app connects users with their Muving scooter, with the city, with other vehicles and with other people on the move.
The company is present in 10 Spanish cities (Madrid, Seville, Cadiz, El Puerto de Santa Maria, Malaga, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Granada, Valencia and Murcia).
Black Toro invests in Torrot Electric and Social Muving
Torrot Electric has closed a €24.59 million capital increase, subscribed by Black Toro Capital and Ivan Contreras, founder and CEO of Torrot Electric. Following the transaction, Black Toro Capital controls 62% of the company, while Iván Contreras controls the remaining 38%.
In parallel to the capital increase, Torrot has started to build a new plant in the Cadiz Free Trade Zone, for which it will spend €16m, financed with its own resources.
In 2015, Black Toro, a British fund specialised in turning around companies in difficult situations, entered for the first time in the capital of Torrot with an injection of €15M to finance the purchase of GasGas. In the transaction, Black Toro took over Torrot's 30% in exchange for a €5M capital increase and, simultaneously, granted a €10M equity loan.
With the current capital increase of €24.59M Torrot aims to reach a turnover of €40M and start earning money in 2017. In addition, in 2016 Black Toro granted Torrot up to three loans of €8M in total with an interest rate between 15% and 20% and a maturity of 5 years. The worrying conditions of these credits forced the auditors to emphasise their fears of a renegotiation of the bases in the analysis of the latest accounts.
In fact, Torrot-Gas Gas closed 2016 with a debt of more than €15M and a loss of €4.7M. However, in the spring of this year the group achieved a month with positive Ebitda for the first time, and since then the results have been improving considerably. In July, turnover exceeded €21M, compared to €15M for the whole of 2016 and €1.5M in 2015.
Meanwhile, Black Toro Capital has acquired a €22M minority stake in Cádiz-based electric scooter rental company Social Muving, which incorporates an electronic brain into Torrot Muvi electric scooters to connect them to its app.
Investment rounds in the Electric Vehicle sector in 2017
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