In an interview with Reuters, the CEO of Deezer announced that he was preparing his German conquest, at a time when the company is regaining interest on the stock market. To take advantage of this last chance, Deezer has reviewed its strategy and is attempting international deployment. Germany therefore joins Brazil, the only country that the platform had decided to invest in since its inception in 2007.
Until then, Deezer capitalized on an offer in partnership with operators of all kinds. More than half of its users were French and the platform never managed to exceed 10 million subscribers and since its birth, Deezer has never been profitable. In recent years, its capitalization has melted, as with the entry into the capital in 2020 of the Mexican television group Azteca (Deezer fell by 23%).
On the stock market, its share price lost up to 50% in the first days of trading, to further reduce the capitalization of the company. Deezer wasn’t even a unicorn anymore in early July (a $1 billion+ company). That is to say… But the trend was reversed at the end of the month. Deezer is currently enjoying a 25% rebound to 4.64 euros (August 5).
Primary engine of growth
“I think we have succeeded in replicating in Brazil the model that we successfully applied in France, that is to say that we enter the market with great strategic partners”, explained Jeronimo Folgueira, the new boss of Deezer for a year. These strategic partnerships, as he calls them, relate to contracts with operators like Orange to integrate Deezer into their package supplements.
For Germany, the CEO of Deezer has already announced that the partnership will be signed with RTL Group. Significant of the absolute calm in the evolution of Deezer in France, the arrival in Germany will form “the engine of growth for the company over the next few years”. The IPO was therefore part of the plans to prepare for this deployment. By going public, Deezer raised 143 million euros. Surely the last envelope of fresh money to invest and hope to obtain results.
