Marketing and sponsoring: that's behind the Teamviewer plan

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At least no one can deny the software company Teamviewer having courage.

After the company from Göppingen in Swabia scared investors two weeks ago because of an expensive sponsorship agreement with the English football club Manchester United, Teamviewer followed up this week.

The logo is now to be emblazoned on the racing cars and driver overalls from Mercedes-AMG Petronas in Formula 1 and Mercedes EQ in the Formula E electric racing series.

Teamviewer, it turns out, dares something.

It cannot be foreseen whether the high marketing expenses will pay off in the end.

The financial market, at least, is skeptical.

Manchester United's five-year sponsorship, in particular, is hard to digest.

According to reports, Teamviewer pays 46 million euros for this, one tenth of annual sales.

Such a sum of course has consequences.

The MDax group then had to cut its profit forecast and the target for the operating margin significantly.

The share, which was still quoted at 50 euros in February, fell from 42 euros to below 36 euros after the deal was announced.

Source: WORLD infographic

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CEO Oliver Steil didn't seem to be impressed.

Teamviewer wants to take part in the Monaco E-Prix with its logo.

The race starts on May 8th, two weeks later the Grand Prix will also continue in Monaco.

"The cooperation makes Teamviewer part of a global high-tech ecosystem that is significantly developing the future of mobility," says the group.

The racing teams are to be equipped with Teamviewer solutions.

Teamviewer wants to promote the development towards zero emissions.

Sport should enable sales to double

At least the advance in sport fits in with the company's goals.

Sales are expected to double within two years, to one billion euros.

Sport can help.

Because it is above all the growth markets of America and Asia in which Teamviewer wants to catch up.

And that's exactly where Manchester United has a lot of fans.

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The company was founded a good 15 years ago and is best known for remote computer maintenance.

The solutions are particularly in demand in the Corona crisis.

If employees in the home office have technical problems, the IT specialists can remotely switch to their computers and help.

The group has more than half a million corporate customers for its remote maintenance tool, with 50,000 new customers added between January and March alone.

According to the company, Teamviewer's software has been installed on more than 2.5 billion devices worldwide since the company was founded.

Customers include companies with fewer than five employees, but also corporations with over 100,000 employees.

A good half of the Fortune 500 companies are said to be or have been subscribers.

The Teamviewer software not only runs on computers, but also on smartphones, tablets, credit card terminals in retail and on large machines in production.

Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things is Teamviewer's new playing field.

The group wants to grow rapidly here, especially in connection with augmented reality.

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Augmented Reality, i.e. the enrichment of reality with virtual information and representations, will reach the mass market, says Teamviewer boss Steil.

The goal is to make this technology usable for everyone.

"We will primarily link Augmented Reality with the Internet of Things and provide specific solutions for digitization in all industries, for example for manufacturing and production, for logistics or customer service."

The boss earns 200,000 euros - a day

Teamviewer also goes shopping for this.

Last year the company took over the Bremen start-up Ubimax, a specialist in wearable computing and augmented reality software for skilled workers in industry.

That was the first acquisition ever in Teamviewer's company history.

The Austrian software start-up Xaleon followed in January and the US company Upskill followed a month ago.

At least Teamviewer boss Steil is already playing in the global income league.

Last year he earned around 71.7 million euros - making him the best-paid manager in Germany.

That corresponds to a daily rate of a good 196,000 euros.

For comparison: Frank Appel, as the best-paid Dax boss at Deutsche Post, received a good ten million euros, not least because payments from long-term compensation packages were due for previous years.

The average earnings of a Dax boss is a little more than five million euros.

In fact, Steil's fixed salary is around 900,000 euros, plus some bonuses, which were particularly high in 2020, as the management board has achieved its goals by 200 percent according to the annual report.

But Steil had agreed with the previous owner Permira, a British financial investor, to share in the company's increase in value through shares.

The company went public in 2019 for more than two billion euros.

In the past year, Steil was therefore awarded a share allocation as a reward.

That should be repeated this year.

"The second outstanding share allocation in the same amount is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2021," says the annual report.

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