Sparks IPO Academy further cements SIX Swiss Exchange’s SME credentials

The Sparks IPO Academy is just the latest in a series of initiatives which the SIX Swiss Exchange is leading on to accelerate growth in the SME and Scale-Up sector.

Sparks IPO Academy further cements SIX Swiss Exchange’s SME credentials
Published at
Medium
News

Last week, SIX Swiss Exchange launched its new Sparks IPO Academy, an exclusive training program for executives working at Swiss-based SMEs with high growth ambitions. The program is designed to prepare and equip the leaders of these ventures ahead of a potential Sparks IPO.

The number of seats was deliberately kept low to ensure that busy executives get the best bang for their buck. This first cohort comprises thirteen companies, spanning sectors from robotics, to medtech, biotech, industrials, and fintech, and boasting several former winners and runners-up of the Top 100 Swiss Startup Award.

“The Swiss venture ecosystem has grown tremendously over the past decade and has enabled numerous business ideas to be tested and products/services ultimately to be commercialized. The result is that we are now gifted with more scale-ups than at any other period in time. The many household names participating in the Sparks Academy show that the growth advantages of public markets continue to be valuable for these twenty-first century scale-ups.”

-- Alex Nikitine, Partner at Walder Wyss

It is no coincidence that the Sparks IPO Academy was unveiled at the Schlieren headquarters of VentureLab, a key partner of our new Sparks Equity Segment. We and our partners fully believe that an IPO can help scale-ups grow more strongly and steadily. Being listed enables companies to focus more of their energy on building great products by simplifying capital raising, opening access to capital channels resilient to economic conditions, and increasing their credibility and trustworthiness towards clients, employees, and business partners.

The Sparks IPO Academy has been widely received as a marker for on-going changes in the Swiss capital market space aimed at enabling more companies to profit from the growth benefits that public markets can offer.

"With the startup ecosystem maturing so fast in Switzerland, we are excited to see that public markets are now ready to offer fast-growing companies new ways to raise capital, strengthen credibility, and offer liquidity to shareholders. This is highlighting the fact that Switzerland is not only an incredibly efficient incubator to launch new innovative startups, but that it is also able to accompany them in their scaling-up as they conquer the world."

-- Patrick Thévoz, CEO and Co-Founder of Flyability

“Bringing SMEs to the public market requires a different skillset and investor base. But investor appetite for smaller scale-ups with growth ambitions and strong equity stories is there. So contrary to popular wisdom, smaller market capitalizations and free floats do not exclude companies from joining public markets. The IPO of Poenina is a case in point.”

-- Dr. Andreas Neumann, Head Equity Capital Markets, Zürcher Kantonalbank

“Public markets offer growth advantages that could be valuable for many scale-ups, from simplifying capital raising, to accessing robust financing channels that have recently allowed record levels of capital to be raised during the early months of the COVID crisis. Unfortunately, many of us are barred today from accessing these benefits because we are too small for the large investors that still dominate IPOs. We need a radical rethink in how shares are allocated in IPOs, similar to what has happened in foreign markets. The Sparks Academy makes me optimistic that established players are changing -- and if they don’t, I am convinced that a fintech will do to the IPO process what Swissquote did for trading twenty years ago.”

-- Ben James, Group CEO of Tradeplus24

The Sparks IPO Academy is just one of the latest of several services which SIX Swiss Exchange has developed not only to help SMEs access public markets, but also for them to benefit from the full growth benefits that public markets can offer. These services include the SME Stock Exchange Sparks, which further increases the benefits of public markets for SMEs; an e-learning offering that teaches SMEs what will be required as a public company; and the research service Stage, which unlocks independent research coverage for SMEs.

Next up is a series of online modules. We look forward to (virtually) seeing Abionic, Aleva Neurotherapeutics, Flyability, Immozins, MCI Group, Securecell, Tradeplus24, and all other participating companies again in early December.

Although the first Sparks IPO Academy has only just begun, companies can already start applying for the 2022/23 program. Click here.