Tuesday 20 July saw the presentation of the annual data on crowdfunding and crowd investing trends in Italy by the Milan Polytechnic Observatory.
How have the last 12 months gone? Very well, it seems. In fact, the sector's fundraising has grown by 172% to €503 million. The total amount raised since 2014 has risen to EUR 953.4 million, approaching the billion mark, with 76.3% of campaigns being successful.
The projects financed last year raised €85.2 million (+75%): €34.3 million from equity platforms and €50.9 million from lending portals.
As of 30 June 2021, there were 51 portals authorised by Consob to raise capital online, 9 more than last year. There have been 831 venture capital campaigns to date, organised by 742 companies, some with multiple rounds. The success rate continues to remain high: in the first 6 months of 2021 it was over 90%, well above the overall average for the entire sample since 2014 of 76.3%.
The average value of the collection target for non-real estate projects is around €90,000, for real estate projects it is €912,000. On average for non-real estate projects 9.23% of the capital is offered in exchange (median value 5.41%); the practice of offering non-voting securities below a certain investment threshold (and voting above the threshold) is reinforced.
Among issuers, SMEs are slowly gaining space, but the market is still dominated by innovative start-ups (57% of cases in the last year, plus 14% of innovative SMEs). The vast majority, as in recent years, operate in Lombardy, then Lazio and Emilia Romagna, and are active in the information and communication services sector. The median pre-money valuation is around €2 million.
The Italian crowd investing market continues to grow in all its forms and declinations," comments Giancarlo Giudici, Scientific Director of the Observatory, "and we are on the eve of an important milestone, the introduction of the new European ECSP Regulation for crowdfunding service providers, which from November 2021 will introduce new requirements for the sector, making the rules between equity and lending portals more uniform and encouraging cross-border operations. It will be an opportunity for Italian platforms to make a further qualitative leap towards standards of transparency, professionalism and protection of savers".
The full report is available at: www.osservatoriocrowdinvesting.it
The (online) presentation of the 6th Italian Crowdinvesting Report is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA5zoJamxGg