12% of European Tech Exits in Last Two Quarters Were Venture-Backed

Europe’s tech ecosystems are booming (see prior data on Berlin and London) on the financing front. How are things looking on the equally important exit front?  With this in mind, we used CB Insights data to analyze European Tech exits over the past two quarters.

Q2’14 matched Q1’14, with 152 overall tech exits, of which, 18 were for venture-backed companies. This included Index Ventures-backed Just-Eat’s IPO which valued the company at $2.44B. Q3’14 showed a 15% growth vs. Q2, with 175 tech exits in Europe, of which 22 were venture-backed, including Stockholm-based Tail-f Systems which was acquired by Cisco for $175M in July. Despite the low numbers of VC-backed exits, with the increasing funding activity in many of Europe’s top markets, we could see VC-backed exits pick up pace in the near future.

UK continues to lead European tech

On a country basis, the UK continues to dominate Europe’s tech exits with over 100 exits over the past two quarters. Germany was a distant second with just over 50 tech exits.  France rounded out the top 3 with over 20 tech exits over the past two quarters including La Fourchette which was backed by Otium Capital, Patech International, and Serena Capital, and acquired by Tripadvisor for ~$140M in May. The full breakdown below.

Microsoft dominates headlines with Mojang acquisition

Over 30 firms acquired multiple European tech companies during the two quarter period. Addtech Group, Microsoft, and Zomato Media were the only companies with 3+ acquisitions in the timeframe. Microsoft made the splashiest acquisition when it announced it was acquiring revenue-funded aka bootstrapped Minecraft creator Mojang for $2.5B in September, along with app analytics platform Capptain, and SyntaxTree. India-based restaurant search and discovery service, Zomato Media also made 3 acquisitions, acquiring Gastronauci, lunchtime.oz and obedovat.sk in an effort to break into Eastern and Central European markets. Addtech Group acquired three electronic component companies.

Europe’s Top Tech Acquirers, Q2’14 – Q3’14

Acquirer	Company’s Acquired
	Flow-Teknikk, Tampereen SahkoPalvelu, Hans Folsgaard
	Capptain, SyntaxTree, Mojang
	Lunchtime.oz, Obedovat.sk, Gastronauci

Image credit: Taxcredits.net // Flickr

For more data around European Tech company financings and exits, check out the CB Insights Venture Capital Database. Sign up free below.