Status: October 27, 2021 2:39 p.m.
United Internet subsidiary Ionos, which specializes in cloud and web hosting businesses, is to go public, according to a media report. This could possibly happen as early as Easter 2022.
Ionos, a subsidiary of United Internet, could go public in the coming year. An IPO (initial public offering) is planned from Easter 2022, as the “Handelsblatt” reported, citing financial circles. Ionos, based in Montabaur, could have a market capitalization of around five billion euros.
Accordingly, an IPO will be planned when the market conditions are favorable, a group spokeswoman confirmed to the newspaper: “An IPO of Ionos is an obvious next step in the development of the company.” United Internet is currently working on preparing Ionos to such an extent that the company can then go public “at the appropriate time in 2022 or 2023”, according to the report.
Cloud computing
In the past, the hard drive of the home PC was naturally the place where you stored your data. But thanks to the fast broadband connections, it has now become attractive to upload texts, images and music to the Internet and save them there. Typically, the Internet is shown as a cloud in network diagrams. cloud) shown. This is where the term cloud computing comes from: the data is in the cloud – i.e. on the Internet.
The advantage: The data is available everywhere, the servers on which they are located are regularly maintained. Loss of data due to a hard drive crash is extremely unlikely. These services are financed in different ways, for example through advertising or license fees.
Hundreds of companies are currently active in the field, including Microsoft and Google. But the online retailer Amazon is also one of the well-known players in cloud computing.
The goal is a European hyperscaler
As the “Handelsblatt” found out, the group asked banks to apply for mandates to organize the listing, said several people familiar with the situation.
With the proceeds from the IPO, the company could finance its great ambitions: “We will be a European hyperscaler alternative,” said Ionos boss Achim Weiss in an interview with the “Handelsblatt” in March. A hyperscaler is a provider of IT resources based on cloud computing.
Leading providers come from the USA
The leading hyperscalers on the market are currently the three US companies Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud and Google Cloud. You also dominate the European cloud market to almost 70 percent. Microsoft was only able to increase its revenues by 50 percent in the cloud business, as the quarterly figures showed.
European companies, on the other hand, hardly play a role in the market: two weeks ago, the French company OVH Cloud went public with a market capitalization of four billion euros. In contrast, Deutsche Telekom is planning a cooperation with Google for a “sovereign cloud” that will be available in Germany from the middle of next year.
United Internet’s share price benefits
Speculations about an early IPO of the subsidiary Ionos have caused United Internet’s share price to skyrocket. At its peak, stocks jumped ten percent on Wednesday after falling sharply since early September. Most recently, the price increase was just under six percent.