Which are Europe’s fastest growing asset finance companies?

T

he annual FT 1000 ranking – currently in its fifth year and published last week – includes several asset finance providers who have shown high growth rates against the challenging backdrop of Covid-19.

The ranking by the Financial Times lists 1000 European companies that achieved the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue between 2016 and 2019.

The FT said the minimum CAGR to make the list this year was 35.5%, slightly lower than last year’s 38.4%.

Leasing Life identified six companies in the FT1000 that provide business leasing services or that host digital platforms for lessors.

One is a provider of vehicle leasing, one offers aircraft leasing services and four – indicative of the pressure under which companies’ cashflows are under during the pandemic – specialise in invoice and/or factoring services.

Four of the companies are UK-based, while Sweden and Germany have one a-piece.

The six also demonstrate a wide range of revenue takings. The highest earner, ACC Aviation, posted revenues of €194m in 2019, while the entrant with the lowest revenue for 2019 was NoviCap with €3.2m.

Crossflow Payments Solutions Trading is a cloud-based marketplace platform connecting working capital suppliers of invoice financing with funders. Crossflow is a UK-based company and appears in 9th place with a CAGR of 310.7%

NoviCap, a UK-based company with operations in The Netherlands and Spain, is an invoice finance provider. The company boasts having handled more than 60,000 invoices, and provided more than €425m in funding, to date. The company was born out of the Barclays Techstars Accelerator programme and ranks 97th this year with a rate of 143%.

Qred, a Swedish business loan and invoice finance provider, has seen its numbers of employees grow from 4 in 2016 to 42 in 2019. It comes in 118th place with a rate of 135.6%.

Funding Options is a British Business Bank-recognised UK company offering a range of funding options for businesses, including asset finance and invoice finance, through its cloud-based platform. The company appears in 223rd position with a rate of 97%.

FleetPool, a German company and mobility-as-a-service provider offering car subscription services for the European market, offers digitised procurement for leasing cars for private and business customers, including fleet management services. The company comes in 436th place with a rate of 67.9%.

ACC Aviation is a UK company that provides global aviation services for the wet leasing, aircraft charter and aviation consultancy sectors, including ACMI (aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance) services for carriers. The company comes in 786th place with a rate of 44.1%.

Criteria for inclusion in the list*

To be included in the list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, a company had to meet the following criteria:

• Revenue of at least €100,000 generated in 2016 (or currency value equivalent according to the average of the actual fiscal year).
• Revenue of at least €1.5m generated in 2019 (or currency value equivalent according to the average of the actual fiscal year).
• The company is independent (the company is not a subsidiary or branch office of any kind).
• The revenue growth between 2016 and 2019 was primarily organic (ie “internally” stimulated)
• If a company is listed on a stock exchange, its share price has not fallen 50% or more since 2019.

Companies from these countries were eligible to participate: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK.
*FT.com

For the full report:

Special Report FT 1000: Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies