Teamviewer makes biggest IPO in Europe

Teamviewer was founded in 2005, by now boasting around 1.5 billion registrations worldwide for its software, which is mostly used as free versions. #BiggestEuropeIPO

Teamviewer's IPO in Frankfurt Stock Exchange. (FSE)

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Germany — German tech firm Teamviewer brought in 2.2 billion euros as it joined the Frankfurt stock market Tuesday, making it the largest flotation in a sparse year across Europe.

Stock in the company, whose main products are software for remote computer maintenance and video conferencing, started trading around 26.25 euros ($28.87) before falling back to around 24.80 in early trading.

Its introductory price had valued the firm based in Goeppingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg at 5.25 billion euros.

British private equity firm Permira, which bought Teamviewer in 2014 for around 870 million euros, made a hefty profit while selling off just 42 percent of the “unicorn” — the nickname for tech firms worth over one billion dollars before flotation.

The initial public offering (IPO) outweighed that of Volkswagen’s trucks unit Traton, which in June raised 1.6 billion euros for an 11.5 percent stake, and Italian payments company Nexi, which raised 2.1 billion in April.

Teamviewer was founded in 2005, by now boasting around 1.5 billion registrations worldwide for its software, which is mostly used as free versions.

It also offers companies a subscription service, used by around 368,000 clients managing hundreds of millions of computers.

“So far opportunities to invest in large, liquid and internationally successful software companies from Germany have been very limited,” said Pascal Spano, analyst at Metzler bank.

“Teamviewer is therefore a welcome addition to the quotations sheet in Germany.”

But the broader market environment is moribund, with the amount of money raised in IPOs worldwide down 22 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, at $40.2 billion, according to consultancy EY.

“The present difficult context means there’s less haste to prepare an IPO,” said EY associate Martin Steinbach, although he added that the traditionally busy fourth quarter could bring a surprise rebound in Frankfurt.