Auto1 announces IPO for the first quarter

Auto1 wants to grow further: the start-up is planning to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the first quarter. Its last valuation was 3.5 billion euros. This makes it one of the most valuable German start-ups.

The first major IPO of the year is imminent: The Auto1 Group wants to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange before the end of the first quarter. The company is expecting proceeds of one billion euros. New shares are to be created through a capital increase, and some investors are also said to want to sell their shares. Auto1 buys up old vehicles in order to sell them on to car dealers. In recent years, however, the company has also focused on private customers, who can buy used vehicles via the Autohero platform, for example, or sell them via WirkaufendeinAuto. Just last summer, Auto1 raised 255 million euros from a US hedge fund in order to make further inroads into the business with end customers.

In December last year, the company was valued at 3.5 billion euros. It is assumed that Auto1 is aiming for a valuation of five billion euros for the IPO. Auto1 intends to invest 750 million euros of the IPO in the further growth of the Autohero platform. The rest of the money is to be used to repay a convertible bond.

30 percent of the company is owned by the two company founders Christian Bertermann and Hakan Koç. They have raised around 1.2 billion euros in 22 financing rounds since the company was founded in 2012. Koç withdrew from the operational business last year and moved to the Supervisory Board, while Bertermann is a member of the two-person Management Board with Markus Boser.

Boser presented figures on the company last year, which showed that Auto1 recorded a profit of 16 million in the third quarter of 2020 and sold 120,000 cars.