First Finnish crowdfunded IPO

Heeros, a cloud-based financial management platform, became the first Finnish company and joined a few European pioneers to organise public share issue after raising earlier an equity crowdfunding round.

Heeros raised 660,000 euros on Invesdor last year. The campaign also brought the company visibility and close to 200 new shareholders.

“Heeros’ IPO is excellent news for Nordic crowdfunding and for the investors of last year’s crowdfunding round; the investors will now get to track their investment and its value more closely,” said Invesdor country manager Thomas Petroff. “We are very happy to play a role in bringing Heeros’ growth story closer to investors for the second time.”

“A pre-IPO crowdfunding campaign is a logical step for a company preparing for an IPO; the campaign brings visibility and shareholders that are valuable when listing,” he said.

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The subscription period of the IPO on Nasdaq First North growth market in Finland started  on October 19.

“Last year’s crowdfunding round was a pre-IPO operation for us. Through crowdfunding, we had a lot of new retail investors joining us on our growth journey even prior to listing on a public market,” Heeros CEO Matti Lattu said in a statement.

Heeros has had year-on-year growth of 20 percent since 2008. The company is aiming to grow in the Benelux countries as utilisation rates of financial management software and e-invoicing there are much lower than in the Nordics.

Heeros Group has three offices in Finland, one in Rotterdam, Netherlands and one in Stockholm, Sweden. The group’s turnover in 2015 was 5.4 million euros and EBITDA was 0.7 million. The group had 58 employees. Heeros offering is only available in Finland and to limited investors in the EEA.