One of the great challenges of the biotech sector in Spain is the growth of companies in the sector that will make it possible for Spanish biotech companies to be strong and compete in the international market. Getting funding in the sector is complicated but not impossible, in the last month we have witnessed how Spanish companies have grown through acquisitions, public funding and programmes to support startups.
The video game industry in Spain had a turnover of €412.4M in 2014, 31% more than in 2013. The youth of the sector, 65% of the companies are less than 5 years old and the funding that the video game industry is receiving make us foresee that it is a sector with a lot of potential, which still has a long way to go.
An international study of Spanish start-ups abroad carried out by the consultancy firm Keyprocom and Ticketbis reveals that 29% of Spanish technology start-ups have an international turnover of more than 60%. A number of these companies are now...
A secondary fund is a fund whose business is to buy investees from other funds. This type of fund is growing considerably. Last year these funds recorded record fundraising figures of $29,000M, and now we have news that Lexington Partners has closed the largest secondary fund in history with $100,100M. In Spain these funds have also been in the news lately, Arcano has set up a new fund of funds and Portobello has sold a block of 7 investees to a secondary fund led by the giant HarbourVest.
In recent weeks, several Basque companies have bought companies in their sectors with the aim of increasing their market share and reaching new geographical markets. Tubacex, for example, has become the world leader in its sector after buying the seamless steel tube division of the Indian company Prakash Steelage.
Despite the fact that Spain has slowed down investment in renewables due to the energy reform, there is still movement in the sector. This week, Cerberus, one of the world's largest venture capital firms, has backed a Spanish company, Renovalia Energy. In addition, Repsol has announced the finalists of its incubation programme.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has drawn up the National Agri-Food and Forestry Innovation and Research Programme to support innovation in the sector. The agri-food sector is facing a crucial challenge for society: the demand for food must be met on a global scale, in a planet that is becoming increasingly populated and subject to the effects of climate change.
After several years of crisis in which the lack of financing made it impossible to complete buyout operations, last year foreign investors began to regain confidence in Spain and started to divest, with significant capital gains for the investors involved.
Faced with the difficulty biotech companies have in finding both private and public funding, they are turning to crowdfunding. This year, Spain has created the first European platform and the second worldwide for biotech crowdfunding. Although the operations closed in Spain are still of a small amount, operations closed in biotechnology in other parts of the world, such as that of Cell Therapheutics for almost €1M, show that it is a form of financing that will eventually have a significant impact on the sector. In addition, the public sector has also launched a crowdfunding platform in the biotech sector.
Venture capital rounds in the ICT sector in July follow the trend we saw in the last InvestmentReport in March, where the average deal size had increased from €1M to €2M from March 2014 to March 2015. In the month of July there have been a number of deals in excess of €4M. Below we highlight some of the deals completed this month.
Analysing the M&A operations in the industrial sector that have taken place in June, it is worth highlighting the investments made in Spanish companies in the packaging sector with different materials. In addition, several of the investors have been foreigners such as DS Smith or Duravent, which reflects the confidence in the Spanish packaging sector. According to the sector barometer Hispack Packaging Trends, 70% of Spanish companies in the sector will increase their turnover this year and almost a quarter of the companies estimate a growth of more than 10%.
The CDTI is contributing to the development of biotechnology in our country. In the last half of 2014 alone, more than 40 biotechnology-related projects received CDTI funding. In addition, the Cdti also supports private funding and in May 2015 injected €5M in Inveready Innvierte Biotech II.