Idealista is undoubtedly one of the leading players in the real estate sector in our country. Founded in 2000 and based in Madrid, Spain, Idealista provides an online classifieds market for home buyers and sellers. Furthermore, idealista’s CRM tools, data analysis, and online mortgage brokerage make it a key destination for potential homeowners and sellers in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
Since its growth, idealista has continued to grow, defining a trajectory where they have had to face the real estate bubble, the crisis, the subsequent economic recovery, and the COVID crisis.
But, how did this company come about? One of its founders, Fernando Encinar, told us about it some time ago in an interview.
His brother Jesús Encinar returned to Spain after spending some time in the United States. The discovery of sales and rental services through the internet in the US and the need to create a similar portal in Spain at that time led them to create a website that would help people find a home.
For months he was thinking about how he would do it and who he would choose to accompany him on the adventure. Finally, the Encinar brothers, along with their other partner César Oteiza, embarked on this story with their own name that is now almost two decades old.
We’re talking about the year 2000, the year Idealista was founded. Let’s put ourselves in that situation: Google was still a project in the United States, social networks didn’t exist, and there was no mention of smartphones, wifi…
In this almost hostile and prehistoric environment of the Internet, the three partners embarked on their project with a clear goal: to bring to Spain something that didn’t exist at the time and to make the process of searching for a home easier for their users (up until then, in our country, the only way to do this was through real estate agencies, on the street, and through newspaper advertisements).
The portal started that year only in Madrid and went through some difficult moments. This is how one of its founders described it: “one of the most difficult moments, in 2002, when the company’s survival depended on a telephone call from our shareholders at the time, who were two savings banks, one from the Basque Country (BBK) and the other from Catalonia (Caixa Catalunya), communicating to us if they would grant us a participatory loan or not. Fortunately, the answer was affirmative and we were able to achieve profitability in January 2003”.
Since then, the results have always been positive for the company and it has become a reference in its sector.
In September 2020, the Swedish EQT fund announced the purchase of Idealista for 1.32 billion euros, which represents the largest digital sector operation in Spanish history, far surpassing the purchase of Privalia by Vente-Privee in 2016 (500 million euros). As EQT explained in a statement, the Idealista management team, led by its founder and CEO Jesús Encinar, will continue at the forefront of the company, “based on its solid history of growth and innovation”.
Through this operation, EQT took control of 80% of the company’s shares, which were in the hands of the investment firm Apax Partners since 2015, when it entered Idealista’s capital. At that time, Idealista was valued at around 235 million euros.
EQT Partners is a global investment company with over 62 billion in capital and 40 billion in assets managed in 19 funds. EQT participates in companies in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the US, and Canada that generate over 27 billion euros annually and create over 159,000 jobs. EQT collaborates with its portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence, and market leadership.
Idealista presented the results of the year 2021, announcing that it had revenues of 101.5 million euros, representing a 23% increase from the 82.5 million euros recorded in the previous year.
Furthermore, the portal obtained a gross operating profit (Ebitda) of 54 million euros compared to the 44 million obtained the previous year, reflecting a margin of 53% on revenue.
Idealista SAU, which obtains its products through the publication and advertising services of the Idealista and Yaencontre websites, presents accounting losses during 2021 that rose to almost 60 million euros, compared to the 35 million in losses of the previous year. The red figures are explained due to the amortization of the business goodwill and intangible assets derived from the company’s purchase at the end of 2020 by the EQT fund.
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