Sunday, 6 October 2024
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Investment bank’s Micromobility Team sees “new levels of interest” in sector

An adviser with investment group D.A. Davidson MCF International, a specialist in cycling and micromobility transactions, has told CI.N interest in the segment is running at levels “not witnessed before during my 14 years in the Cycling Industry and my 25 years as M&A Adviser.”

One year ago the financial advisers announced the creation of a new MicroMobility Team, backed by bike industry knowledge, in a bid to offer services to the quickly multiplying number of businesses seeking mergers and acquisitions guidance. Having this week launched a its first paper detailing the appeal of the market to investors the team is gearing up for a new wave of deals.

Anders Hedgren, a private investor and member of the cycling industry for the past 12 years is one of the senior advisers. He told CI.N that the Micromobility Team was set up specifically in recognition of a new wave of appetite for investment in the industry.

“It has, over the years, become apparent that the bicycle industry is in great need of professional support when it comes to strategic, financial and M&A-related advice,” he said. “It is, therefore, both greatly satisfying and exciting to further share the launch of the D.A. Davidson MCF International MicroMobility Team; An Investment Bank, present in Europe & North America, focusing on the Bicycling and MicroMobility segments.”

Alongside partners in Europe and North America the team has identified the Micromobility world as having arrived at a junction where mega trends such as mobility, health and recreation and sustainability meet with a range of global challenges, such as a public and political desire to reshuffle transport, as well as positive trends for the two-wheel mobility market.

It was this perfect storm of factors that the ‘Bike Bankers’ behind the Canyon deal identified as highly investible factors in the present climate.

Hedgren has since joined Cycling Industries Europe’s board of directors in a role that offers guidance on what CEO Kevin Mayne described in a prior interview with CI.N as a “remarkable” appetite in the private equity world.

“I’ve had some remarkable conversations with investment bankers who would like to put money in to the cycling industry but are unable to choose where to start,” said Mayne in December last year.

Hedgren told CI.N that he took “the role to increase the awareness of the Industry´s need for investments and to show both the financial and societal values which can be created by having Industry and Investment Stakeholders working together.”

Accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the shift in transport behaviours represents a significant opportunity for both investors and bike labels pushing the envelope of innovation alike, believes the new fund.

In its first MicroMobility Industry Update, published this week, D.A. Davidson MCF International illustrates the point by delivering interviews with industry leaders, investors and entrepreneurs.

Related: An investor’s guide to cycling and e-Mobility in the stock market.