Germany’s equity crowdfunding sector has been quietly flourishing over the past few years. Its growth and diversity has been stimulated largely by four major operators: SeedMatch, Bergfurst, Innovestment and Companisto. The latter-most platform – Companisto – has just announced that one of its funded projects could be on the verge of returning a substantial profit to its investors.
The campaign in question was the first ever project to be hosted by the Companisto platform. The fundraiser? None other than Companisto itself. It’s not uncommon for established crowdfunding platforms to attempt a self-sustaining round – but it is unusual to see a platform begin life as a platform by funding itself. Nonetheless, between June and September in 2012, 446 private investors poured a grand total of €100,000 into the-then fledgling Companisto platform – taking a calculated risk upon a business that would soon channel such investments into external companies.
And now a large investor – who for the time being remains nameless – has made an offer to purchase all the shares that were issued in that round for a sum of €200,000. That equates to a return of €100,000 after just 2.5 years – roughly equivalent to a 44% APR. This is another landmark achievement for the equity crowdfunding industry – and it comes roughly a month after the groundbreaking ReWalk Robotics IPO. The ReWalk offering returned roughly 5.5x the value of the original investment to its OurCrowd investors – according to AltFi Data. ReWalk is comfortably the most profitable equity crowdfunding deal on record. The Companisto round will become the most profitable campaign in the history of German equity crowdfunding, if the €200,000 investment goes through.
But will it? Those that invested in the round now face a choice: to sell out with 2x returns, or to reject the offer in the hope of an even higher return in the future. From November 17th 2014, all shareholders from the original round will be asked to vote as to whether the €200,000 offer should be accepted. Polls will remain open for exactly 1 month. We’ll be reporting on the result on December 17th 2014 – don’t miss out on the result of one of the equity crowdfunding sector’s most fascinating dilemmas to date.
