CEO Carsten Höltkemeyer,
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Solaris aims to triple revenues over next two years but won't rule out further job cuts
Financial figures show that Solaris, which has a German banking licence, reported a doubling of revenues last year to €101m, but it reported a pre-tax loss of €34m. Now it is aiming to triple revenues over the next two years.
German banking-as-a-service provider Solaris (formerly Solarisbank) believes it can triple revenue to €300m over the next two years but has not ruled out further job cuts as it battles challenges on several fronts.
The Berlin-based fintech last year scooped €190m in a Series D funding round, joining a group of Europe’s most highly valued fintechs as it acquired unicorn status with a €1.4bn price tag.
Financial figures show that Solaris, which has a German banking licence, reported a doubling of revenues last year to €101m, but it reported a pre-tax loss of €34m.
But Solaris has said it is now on course to swing into the back by the end of the year and its new CEO Carsten Höltkemeyer, the former Germany CEO of Barclaycard, said the fintech has the potential to report a tripling of revenues over the next two years.
Höltkemeyer told the Financial Times: “I see the potential of €300m net revenues [by 2024], and of course have the ambition to achieve it.”
The new CEO said the majority of the increase in revenues is already locked in after the fintech won Europe’s biggest motoring association, ADAC, as a client, processing more than one million of its credit cards which will generate more than €100m in annual revenues while rising interest rates will add an extra €25m a year.
However, Höltkemeyer pointed out that the rise in its revenue goal would partly depend on broader market conditions.
Solaris has had to contend with several recent challenges, including making job cuts while it has also been hit by clients reducing growth plans and one client, online lender Nuri, filing for insolvency.
A further headache this year came when BaFin, the financial regulator, castigated Solaris for organisational flaws, meaning that it imposed stricter capital requirements and that new clients had first to be approved by the regulator.
Höltkemeyer told the Financial Times that he could not rule out further job cuts in addition to those previously announced this year, when Solaris axed nearly 10 per cent of its 750 workforce.
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