BEE4 completes fourth listing and embarks on XP to accelerate its “access division”

An energy efficiency project company, Eletron Energia from Paraná, rang the bell, exactly one hour ago, at the opening trading session of its shares, with an opening price of R$33.

The path chosen was not, however, a traditional IPO on B3. The alternative route was BEE4, a tokenized share trading market regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and focused on small and medium-sized companies, with annual revenues between R$10 million and R$300 million.

Eletron is the fourth company listed on the platform, launched in September 2022 and a kind of “access division” of the capital market. With the debut, BEE4 opens its listing season in 2024 and begins an agenda to consolidate its model, which includes the announcement of XP, which originated this operation, as its newest listing consultant.

“We see 2023 as a soft launch, as we needed to show this market working. Now, the expectation is much greater”, says Patrícia Stille, co-founder and CEO of BEE4, to NeoFeed. “Our projection is to make 11 listings in 2024 – or a smaller number, but with larger operations – and move at least R$500 million in offers.”

To kick off this new stage, Eletron Energia raised R$3.3 million in its offer at BEE4, attracting investors with contributions from R$2,000 to more than R$1 million. The company debuts trading on the platform with a free float of 8.21%.

Founded in 2015 and with a broad portfolio of energy efficiency projects for companies and industries, the company well illustrates the prerequisites for a listing on BEE4. Among other points in addition to revenue, the candidate must be an S/A and publish quarterly and audited balance sheets.

Having an operation with high growth rates is another important component. Eletron, for example, had a 550% jump in its revenue between 2019 and 2023, from R$2.7 million to R$17.6 million.

“These are companies with a critical mass of results and that have already hit the big time,” says Stille. “BEE4 is among the startups early stage and mature companies. Between these two worlds, there is a large volume of SMEs, with a lower mortality rate, which makes the risk-return ratio more attractive.”

Co-founder and chairman of BEE4, Rodrigo Fiszman adds other elements to highlight the potential embedded in this equation. “We are talking about a universe, just in this revenue range, of 350 thousand companies in Brazil. And that, until then, they did not have an access market.”

Fiszman and Stille began to come into contact with these stories and identified this gap when they were still partners at XP. And now, the company’s arrival as a listing consultant, through XP Empresas, is seen as additional fuel to accelerate the platform’s expansion.

In practice, the role of the listing consultant is similar to that of an investment bank in a traditional IPO, by preparing and assisting companies throughout the listing process. At the same time, these advisors They also act in originating new candidates for an offer.

“This origination is a long-term work and Eletron was the first concrete case of the conversations we had already been having with XP”, says Fiszman. “We are very excited about the potential of this partnership, as XP has a very relevant base of small and medium-sized companies.”

In addition to XP, BEE4 has nine other listing consultants already accredited. The list includes names such as Auddas, a boutique specializing in M&As and company restructuring; the audit startup Diligia and the broker Genial Investimentos.

From origination to distribution

Genial, in turn, is also involved in another aspect where BEE4 sees good prospects for advancement from this year onwards: the distribution of offers to investors. In November, the company and Itaú Unibanco were announced as the first two brokers to be plugged into the platform.

Still in the integration phase of the two partners, BEE4 understands that, with this association, it will have much more strength and capacity to reach more customers, especially individuals, whose access to other investment options in companies of this size is more restricted. .

“There are two brokers with very different and complementary profiles”, observes Fiszman. “Itaú will begin this integration with the private banking segment and Genial, which has more than 1.3 million customers, is very well established in retail.”

Until now, the distribution of offers has been carried out by Beegin, a Solum platform, a group that also controls BEE4. With the channel, the operation reached 6 thousand registered customers, most of them qualified individual and retail investors.

After the completion of the initial offerings, in which companies can raise up to R$100 million, the companies’ tokenized shares begin to be traded in weekly auctions, held every Wednesday, from 12pm to 8pm, in a measure adopted to concentrate the operations and liquidity.

With this limited distribution capacity, Beegin in the soft launch, before Eletron, BEE4 was the stage for the IPOs of Engravida, a network of assisted reproduction clinics; Mais Mu, for healthy snacks; and Plamev Pet, which offers health and assistance plans for pets.

These three offers totaled a total of close to R$27 million, in addition to moving around R$3.5 million in the more than 70 auctions already held by the platform. Now, advances from origination to distribution help explain the expectation for an exponential jump in these numbers.

“We have one pipeline of more than 30 companies in conversations, some already in set up for listing,” says Stille. It highlights other expectations. “With more volume, houses research They will start covering the assets and, when we reach 20, 25 listings, our idea is to move on to forming an index.”

On the way to achieving these numbers, Fiszman notes that this pipeline includes varied sectors, such as education, industry, technology and various retail segments. And it reinforces that the expansion of distribution is opening the doors to the possibilities of much larger figures in funding.

“The entry of Itaú and Genial naturally changes the profile of the companies and offers”, he states. “What we have seen in this pipeline These are companies seeking between R$30 million and R$100 million in funding.”