Connect with us

Published

on

The Pleo app pictured on a smartphone next to one of the fintech firm’s corporate cards.

Pleo

Danish fintech firm Pleo has appointed a new chief financial officer, the company told CNBC exclusively, beefing up its executive team — a sign the company is readying itself for an eventual initial public offering.

The company hired Soren Westh Lonning, a financial services executive with more than 20 years at companies such as Danish bioscience firm Chr Hansen, hearing aid company WS Audiology, and Danish Endurance, a sports and outdoor clothing startup.

Most notably, Lonning had experience as CFO at Danish food enzyme maker Chr Hansen. Chr Hansen, which is listed on the Danish stock exchange, is one of Denmark’s most valuable publicly listed firms, with a market cap of more than $10 billion.

The European Union recently approved a $22 billion merger between Chr Hansen and competitor Novozymes.

Lonning told CNBC his biggest priorities for the firm when taking over as CFO will be pushing the company toward profitability and maturity; assessing how to continue growing the business despite the difficult macroeconomic environment; and pushing for the sound use of data to make better decisions as a business.

“There’s many companies similar to Pleo who are going through … balancing growth and efficiency or profitability in the environment that we operating in right now,” Lonning said.

“Obviously, we want to continue to to grow and grow fast, but the environment also changed. That’s a dilemma for companies, but even more so for the lifestyle of Pleo and tech companies.”

“So I think I can contribute in that direction, making sure we get as good as possible resource allocation across the company in terms of, you know, finding, finding the pockets where we get most bang for the buck in investing.”

Symbolic move

While Pleo says it is not in a rush to go public, appointing a new CFO is a symbolic move that indicates a company is beefing up its accounting and compliance teams and systems in preparation of an eventual stock market listing.

Jeppe Rindom, Pleo’s CEO, told CNBC the firm is “continuously evaluating various options to fuel expansion that best serve our customers.” An IPO, he said, is an “important consideration,” but “no definitive plans have been set in motion.”

“Part of the responsible decision-making that’s guided us to where we are now is an awareness of how market conditions impact public tech companies and understanding if a decision like this would be in the best interest of Pleo and our stakeholders,” Rindom said.

“Adding Søren to our team is about bolstering our financial strategies and comes at a time of high growth for Pleo driven by market expansion and investments to win mid-market customers,” he added.

However, Rindom added that the stage of maturity Pleo has reached as a business means that it’s “only prudent” to start thinking about the question of an eventual IPO, and suggested the firm wants to be ready for such an event by 2025.

“If you look at the markets today, it’s hard to be optimistic because there’s been IPOs this year and, quite honestly, they haven’t been performing super well,” he said. “So we don’t see ourselves go to market in this context.”

“But we are thoughtful, and we think we need to be ready for eventually, in order to be ready in, let’s say, two years, there are certain things you need to think of already now. And so we’re starting to adapt to that mindset of it.”

Hiring a CFO like Lonning, Rindom said, provides Pleo with enough “optionality” for an IPO, adding that Pleo is upgrading its processes around accounting, risk and compliance in order to “mature in a way that also resonates with an IPO eventually, should that be needed.”

Lucrative path

Pleo has recently made early moves into the world of credit. The company recently launched overdrafts for customers, as part of a larger product revamp earlier this year. The company said it wants to offer more credit products in the future.

Pleo has built a business around a product that financial executives — from CFOs to senior accountants — can use to get visibility over their cash flows and make better decisions about how to manage expenses.

Lending is viewed as more lucrative path for financial firms than payment fees since they can earn interest from cash lent out to customers — especially now when interest rates are higher.

Founded in Copenhagen in 2015, Pleo offers a single platform attached to a company-branded card that lets companies track their spending as well as file and organize their expenses.

The firm, which was last privately valued at $4.7 billion, competes with the likes of SAP’s Concur, as well as startups including U.S. firm Brex, U.K.-based Soldo, and France’s Spendesk.

The firm has raised more than $434 million in funding to date, and is backed by the likes of Coatue, Bain Capital Ventures, Thrive Capital, Creandum, and Seedcamp.

Continue Reading

Technology

Online estate planning firm Trust & Will raises $25 million in funding round that includes Northwestern Mutual, UBS

Published

on

By

Online estate planning firm Trust & Will raises  million in funding round that includes Northwestern Mutual, UBS

Trust & Will founders, Cody Barbo (CEO), Brian Lamb, and Daniel Goldstein.

Courtesy: Trust & Will

Legal technology company Trust & Will said Tuesday that it has raised $25 million in a Series C funding round. The San Diego-based firm, ranked No. 41 on last year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised $75 million to date.

Trust & Will aims to shake things up in the arcane estate planning industry and make these key wealth preservation and wealth transfer services more accessible to families. Relying on a mix of technology and human oversight, Trust & Will provides legally valid documents that adhere to state guidelines.

The company says the funding will be used to double down on artificial intelligence.

“AI enables families and advisors to plan with greater clarity and confidence,” co-founder and CEO Cody Barbo said in a statement announcing the funding. “By combining technology with human compassion, we’re transforming how people protect and preserve their legacies.”

The new round was led by Moderne Ventures, and includes Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, UBS Next and Erie Insurance. The most recent publicly available valuation figure for Trust & Will was $169 million, according to PitchBook data as of June 2022. The company told CNBC its valuation is now in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and has increased by more than 5x from its 2020 Series B valuation to its new Series C, but declined to be more specific.

More coverage of the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50

Trust & Will started when two friends wondered why there weren’t more online options to create a will. Most of their financial lives were already online — banking, taxes, insurance — but wills would require thousands of dollars and talking to a lawyer. Or a barebones online template that doesn’t leave room for customization or questions. 

Its closest competitors, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer, focus on a broader variety of services. There’s also FreeWill.com, which offers free templates for people to fill out.

A recent annual report from Trust & Will found that although 83% of Americans believe estate planning is important, only 31% have a will, and 55% have no plan at all. Today, the company says it has helped hundreds of thousands of families create estate plans and settle probate to solve for that problem, and over one million Americans have started their legacy planning on the platform.

The company works directly with individuals and through partnerships with financial institutions. Trust & Will’s partnerships include Bank of America, USAA and Navy Federal. To get the word out to the general public, the company recently hired its first celebrity brand ambassadors, Super Bowl Champion Matthew Stafford and his wife, podcaster Kelly Stafford, to talk about their estate planning experience in a national TV commercial. It also recently became the official estate planning partner to two professional sports teams, the Los Angeles Kings and San Diego Wave.

“Every family deserves access to estate planning, and every professional deserves tools that simplify the process while delivering exceptional results,” Barbo stated in the release. “This Series C funding is more than a company milestone — it’s a step toward transforming estate planning into an essential service that touches every family’s life and legacy.”

Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.

Continue Reading

Technology

Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

Published

on

By

Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

Hinge Health’s Enso product.

Courtesy: Hinge Health

Hinge Health, a provider of digital physical therapy services, filed to go public on Monday, the latest sign that the IPO market is starting to crack open.

Hinge Health uses software to help patients treat musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. The company’s revenue last year increased 33% to $390 million, according to its prospectus, and its net loss for the year narrowed to $11.9 million from $108.1 million a year earlier.

The IPO market has been quiet across the tech sector for the past three years, but within digital health it’s been almost completely silent, as companies have struggled to adapt to an environment of muted growth following the Covid-19 pandemic. No digital health companies held IPOs in 2023, according to a report from Rock Health, and last year the only notable offerings were Waystar, a health-care payment software vendor, and Tempus AI, a precision medicine company.

“We have many decades of work ahead,” Hinge Health CEO Daniel Perez said in the filing Monday. “We hope you join us on this journey.”

The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HNGE.”

Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg, Hinge Health’s chairman, co-founded the company in 2014 after experiencing personal struggles with physical rehabilitation, according to the company’s website.

Members of Hinge Health can access virtual exercise therapy and an electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso. The company claims its technology can help users improve their pain, reduce the need for surgery and cut down health-care costs.

The San Francisco-based company has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global and Coatue Management, and it boasted a $6.2 billion valuation as of October 2021. The biggest outside shareholders are venture firms Insight Partners and Atomico, which own 19% and 15% of the stock, respectively, according to the filing.

Hinge Health’s dual class stock structure gives each share of Class B common stock 15 votes. Almost all of the Class B shares are owned by the founders and top investors.

Employees across more than 2,250 organizations, including Morgan Stanley, Target and General Motors, can access Hinge Health’s offerings. The company had more than 532,000 members as of Dec. 31, and more than 20 million people are eligible to enroll, the filing said.

Hinge Health declined to comment.

WATCH: The market is in a good environment for hedge funds

The market is in a good environment for hedge funds, says Citi's Mithra Warrier

Continue Reading

Technology

Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

Published

on

By

Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

People wait in line for t-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an IPO earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

It was a bad day for tech stocks, and a brutal one for fintech.

As the Nasdaq suffered its steepest decline since 2022, some of the biggest losers were companies that sit at the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Stock trading app Robinhood tumbled 20%, bitcoin holder Strategy fell 17% and crypto exchange Coinbase lost 18%. Much of the slide in those three stocks was tied to the drop in bitcoin, which fell almost 5%, continuing its downward trajectory. The price of the leading cryptocurrency is now down 19% in the past month, falling after a big-post election pop in late 2024.

Beyond the crypto trade, online lenders and payments companies also fell more than the broader market. Affirm, which popularized buy now, pay later loans, dropped 11%, as did SoFi, which offers personal loans and mortgages. Shopify, which provides payment technology to online retailers, fell more than 7%.

JPMorgan Chase fintech analysts on Monday highlighted declining consumer confidence as a potential challenge for companies that rely on consumer spending for growth. In late February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 98.3 for the month, down nearly 7%, the largest monthly drop since August 2021. Walmart recently reported a shift away from discretionary purchases, underscoring the potential trouble.

“Our universe has modestly outperformed the S&P 500 since the election, but sentiment has soured of late on declining consumer confidence and signs of slowing discretionary spend,” the JPMorgan analysts wrote.

The fintech selloff follows a strong rally in the fourth quarter, driven by Fed rate cut expectations and hopes for a more favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration.

WATCH: PayPal CEO Alex Chriss on opportunities for consumers and small businesses

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss: Huge opportunity to deliver to consumers and help small business

Continue Reading

Trending