French business banking unicorn Qonto is planning to carry out rounds of secondary share sales, the latest of several European scaleups taking to the secondary market to generate liquidity while opportunities for public listings remain scarce.
Speaking on stage at Sifted Summit this week, Qonto cofounder and CEO Alexandre Prot confirmed the company is “planning on doing secondary rounds” to offer liquidity to employees and early investors.
Last year the Financial Times reported Qonto was speaking to investors to sell at least €200mn of existing shares valuing the company at €5bn, although no agreement had been reached yet at that point. Qonto declined to share valuation details or specific numbers.
The Paris-based company provides business accounts for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to help them manage all things finance, from paying and getting paid to overseeing expenses, cash flow and bookkeeping.
It has raised over €600m to date, including a €486m Series D in 2022 at a €4.4bn valuation led by Tiger Global and TCV. This makes Qonto one of the most highly valued private tech companies in France.
With a presence in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Austria, the business has been profitable for two years. In 2024 it reported €448.7m in revenues and €144m in net profits.
Rewarding employees and early investors
Qonto is often pitched as one of the few European companies with the potential to IPO in the coming years, but the company has repeatedly denied that a public listing is on the cards in the short-term.
“It’s very much about growing and scaling across Europe,” Prot said during the event. “Whether we do that as a public or a private company, we don’t care too much.”
With Qonto now profitable, the company doesn’t need to raise more money; “the only question left is liquidity for our early investors and employees,” said Prot.
“We’re planning on doing secondary rounds,” said Prot. “With that secondary market being very active… we don’t have any real need in the short-term for an IPO.”
Prot pointed to fintech giant Stripe as an example of a large-scale company that has successfully remained private while organising liquidity events “very frequently” for employees and investors.
The past few months have seen a number of other European scaleups carry out secondary share sales as the market for public listings remains frosty. In September UK banking giant Revolut launched a secondary sale valuing the company at $75bn, while last year neobank Monzo did an employee share sale at a $5.9bn valuation.
