"It's a second attempt but the situation is different from what it was in 2015. (...) Music streaming is really established, it represents almost two thirds of recorded music revenue, which was not not the case before", explains Jeronimo Folgueira, 40, at the head of the French unicorn since July 2021.

"The state the company is in today is much better than it was seven years ago. The company has changed, the market has changed: now is the right time to take this step and become a company listed", adds the Spanish leader.

The youngest European boss of the New York Stock Exchange after having supervised the listing of the online dating group Spark Networks, he will experience an IPO for the second time, while the context is "difficult at the moment" for technology stocks in the financial markets.

To succeed in this new attempt, the main shareholders of the French platform – in particular the Anglo-American billionaire Len Blavatnik who holds 43% of the shares – have chosen a less risky introduction system, via the Spac I2PO, which has already raised funds. on the stock exchange with the aim of merging with a company and facilitating its listing.

This investment vehicle, founded by the Pinault family, businessman Matthieu Pigasse, and former WarnerMedia executive Iris Knobloch, has already enabled Deezer to raise 143 million euros.

"They provide us with the support, the expertise and the capital that we need to execute our strategy", underlines Jeronimo Folgueira, while the valuation of Deezer will reach 1.05 billion euros, a discount of 23% since the entry into the capital of the Mexican television group Azteca in 2020.

Partnership strategy

Launched in 2007, the subscription music listening service claims nearly 30% of the market in France, but its 9.6 million subscribers only represent 2% of the global music streaming market, far behind the Swedish leader Spotify ( 31% market share), Apple, Amazon and Tencent, according to MIDiA.

The strategy of Deezer, which wants to more than double its income by 2025, is to bet on music, its universe and its technology, unlike Spotify which is multiplying the launches of podcasts or Amazon which is going for audio books.

To take advantage of the rapid growth of the global streaming market (+26.4% users in one year in the second half of 2021), Deezer intends above all to join forces with players already established in several "key markets" to support on existing customer bases, such as the operators Orange in France and Tim in Brazil, or recently with the RTL group in Germany.

"Our intention is to find partners with whom we can enter new markets, because we have an extremely competitive product and, with the right distribution, we know that we can conquer market share and compete with the big players", explains Jeronimo Folgueira.

"It is much more advantageous for us to concentrate our resources" on "the five to ten markets" that matter in the sector such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, or even the Netherlands. Down, he points out.

If the Paris-based company has "global" ambitions, it intends to cultivate its French "pride" to become one of the "many examples of large French consumer companies that have really succeeded in the world", warns the Spanish leader, before ringing the bell at the Euronext premises in La Défense.

© 2022 AFP