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Before Adyen was expected to begin trading on Euronext Amsterdam on June 13, 2018, CEO Pieter van der Does told employees the IPO would put the company “on a larger stage.” The $8.4 billion figure reported the day before was Adyen’s valuation at IPO pricing—not money raised for the company: existing shareholders were selling shares, and Adyen said it would issue no new ones.
What did Adyen’s CEO tell employees about the IPO?
In an email quoted by VentureBeat on June 12, 2018, van der Does described the listing as a milestone for the team: “Tomorrow will put us on a larger stage,” he wrote. “A stage that you deserve. I feel very lucky to be building Adyen together with all of you. I’m sure that we will look back at this in the future and realize that this was only the beginning.”
He also said employees would work as usual rather than mark the listing with a bell or gong. “While it’s definitely important to celebrate successes, investor liquidity is not something we celebrate,” he wrote, adding that the sale “does in itself not impact Adyen.” VentureBeat reproduced the email’s wording; the company page it linked to, titled “Pieter’s message to employees,” was not independently retrievable.
Did Adyen raise money in its 2018 IPO?
No, according to the contemporaneous coverage. Adyen was not issuing new shares to raise capital. Existing shareholders planned to sell about 13.4% of the company, with approximately $1.1 billion in proceeds going to those sellers, VentureBeat reported.
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| Transaction type | What is sold | Who receives the proceeds |
|---|---|---|
| Primary issuance | New shares issued by the company | The company |
| Secondary sale | Existing shareholders’ shares | The selling shareholders |
Adyen’s transaction was described as a secondary sale. Van der Does said it would welcome new shareholders while allowing existing external investors flexibility. The distinction matters: an IPO valuation can be large even when the company itself receives no proceeds from the shares sold.
What did the $8.4 billion valuation mean?
VentureBeat reported on June 12, 2018, that Adyen’s IPO had been priced at an $8.4 billion valuation, at the high end of its target. A June 4 report on the filing had described a proposal that could value the company at up to $8.3 billion. Those are different stages of the offering: the latter was an earlier proposed figure, while $8.4 billion was the valuation reported after pricing.
The $8.4 billion was not the amount of cash Adyen collected. The same June 12 report put the planned sale at about $1.1 billion, paid to selling shareholders. Adyen shares were expected to start trading on Euronext Amsterdam the following day.
Why did van der Does say employees would keep working?
He framed the share sale as liquidity for investors rather than an operating event for Adyen. In the email reproduced by VentureBeat, he said the process had been a “minimal distraction” and that employees would be in the office on the first trading day. His message separated a public-market milestone from the company’s day-to-day work: celebrate successes, he said, but not investor liquidity itself.
What else was reported about Adyen at the time?
VentureBeat described Adyen as a Dutch payments company and named Facebook and Netflix among its clients. Its June 4 filing report also named Airbnb, Uber and Spotify. These were examples reported at the time, not a complete customer list or evidence of current customer relationships.
VentureBeat reported that Adyen had raised $266 million in venture capital since its founding and that Index Ventures held a 16.86% stake, attributing the stake to the IPO prospectus. The June 4 report also cited prospectus figures including 38% revenue growth from 2016 to 2017 and a 63% year-over-year increase in payment volume in 2017. It reported first-quarter 2018 net income of €24.1 million ($28.2 million) on revenue of €316 million ($369.4 million), and 668 full-time employees. These are historical figures reported in 2018; the prospectus itself was not directly reviewed here.
Quick Recap
Sources
- VentureBeat, June 12, 2018: IPO pricing and van der Does’s employee email
- VentureBeat, June 4, 2018: IPO filing and proposed valuation
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