Berlin-based live entertainment group DEAG has announced that it will re-list its shares on the Frankfurt stock exchange in the first quarter of this year, “subject to market conditions”.
Speaking about the proposed listing of the company’s shares, Detlef Kornett, co-CEO, said that DEAG believes there is “enormous growth potential in our business… the road ahead of us is paved with opportunity”, highlighting the company’s “recurring revenues from over 30 festivals, [and] intellectual property created from children’s musicals to light trails”.
DEAG is the owner of UK live promoter Kilimanjaro, Inverness music festival Belladrum, Nottingham-based Gigantic and ticketing company MyTicket.co.uk, and a range of other live music businesses across Europe.
In January 2021, in the midst of the live industry shutdown caused by the global pandemic, DEAG’s largest shareholder Apeiron Investment Group led a syndicate of investors representing a 47% stake in DEAG that pushed for the company to de-list from the public stock market, offering to buy out other shareholders to enable the move.
Having stabilised and grown during its period of private ownership, DEAG now has revenues of over €325 million annually and has, according to the “re-IPO” shareholder prospectus, completed over twelve acquisitions since going private in 2021.
As part of the Frankfurt listing the company says that it will “re-segment” its business into two divisions - Live Entertainment and Ticketing And Services. That ticketing business has “over one million monthly users and over 820 content partners”, says DEAG, and has significantly increased the number of tickets sold through DEAG’s own ticketing platforms for DEAG-owned events.
As a result of the re-IPO, the company expects to raise between €40 million and €50 million. It says that this money will be used to “further accelerate” its “Buy & Build acquisition strategy”, which will see the company go shopping for “high margin ticketing businesses” and other opportunities.
That “Buy & Build strategy” has seen the company’s M&A team complete 37 acquisitions since 1999, with a target of five to eight acquisitions per year after the stock market listing takes place.
