Creactives Group SpA: Creactives Group S.p.A. joins the Vienna Stock Exchange and starts its "next step" in the field of Applied AI

[ Report ]

Bologna (pta014/19.05.2020/08:00) - In two months, and during the full lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic, the company perfectly succeeded in raising 2,3M EUR from 24 Italian and foreign investors, both professional and institutional, completing the listing on the Vienna Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of 33,94M EUR

Bologna, May 19, 2020. Creactives Group S.p.A. ("Creactives Group") (ISIN IT0005408593 - ticker: CREG), an international company that develops Artificial Intelligence technologies to address real-life business problems which are too complex to be solved through conventional approaches, announces that it has been admitted to the Vienna Stock Exchange, Direct Market segment.

The first day of trading will be next Wednesday (May 20, 2020) and it will be possible to trade shares through the main European financial brokers (such as Directa SIM in Italy). The market capitalization will be 33,94M EUR, corresponding to a price/share equal to 3,11 EUR/share.

Creactives Group is the result of the business combination between Balaban Technology S.p.A. ("Balaban") and Creactives S.p.A. ("Creactives").

Balaban is a Search Company focused on technology, founded in February 2020 and promoted by Giandomenico (Nico) Sica and Massimo Grosso. Giandomenico Sica is a tech entrepreneur and investor, founder of Grafoventures, his own investment business focused on Small Caps in the software industry across Southeast Europe (3 IPOs on the Italian Stock Exchange). Massimo Grosso is an investor and a senior strategic advisor to tech Small Caps. Among others, he personally supported the IPOs of MailUp, DHH, Piteco, Cyberoo, WIIT (all on the Italian Stock Exchange), Zaim Credit Systems (London Stock Exchange).

Creactives is a software company that develops Artificial Intelligence solutions for real-time procurement insights and assures data quality at the source of purchasing processes in any ERP or Source to Pay platform. It sells internationally (70% of its turnover is from outside Italy) and, among its customers, accounts notable brands such as Acciona, Airbus, AVL, BASF, Buzzi Unicem, CAF, Dubai Pretroleum, Enel, Gestamp, Grupo CAF, Heraeus, Lenzing, Siemens, Tetra Pak, Unicredit. The company has been co-founded by Paolo Gamberoni, Adriano Garibotto and Francesco Bellomi. Paolo Gamberoni - former senior manager in Accenture - is the managing director since 2000, conducting the company through different business models, the adoption of the most innovative technology and the internationalization process. Adriano Garibotto since 2000 is dedicated to the sales and to the customer's management supporting the internationalization of the company. Francesco Bellomi, after the experience as International Fellow at Stanford University, spent the last 20 years designing Artificial Intelligence focused industrial solutions based on Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning (including Deep Learning) and Knowledge Engineering. The company has been backed by Add Value S.p.A. an Italian company operating in the Italian ICT industry for 25 years, implementing high quality and reliable application solutions for banks, insurance companies and large companies.

Seven days after its foundations Balaban signed the preliminary agreement with Creactives, and then raised 2,3M EUR from 24 Italian and foreign Investors, both professional and institutional, through a convertible bond to support its business combination, completed on April 24, 2020. The bond has been converted into equity on May 7, 2020.

The whole activity has been carried out during the full lockdown (ref. Covid-19 pandemic).

Giandomenico Sica, former CEO of Balaban and Board Member of Creactives Group, declares: "When we created Balaban we hoped to find a company like Creactives in which to invest and an entrepreneurial team like Paolo, Adriano and Francesco - with such a great mix of management, marketing and technological skills - as a partner of our new entrepreneurial journey. Now we are looking forward to making together this next step in our story as a publicly listed company on the Vienna Stock Exchange. Special thanks go to the team of the Vienna Stock Exchange for the great support during the listing process. We decided to list on the Vienna Stock Exchange because we believe that it represents an ideal venue for ambitious European technology scale-ups with an international footprint thanks to its reputation, flexibility and cost-efficient operations."

Massimo Grosso, Promoter of Balaban and Investor Relator of Creactives Group, declares: "The Business Combination with Balaban and the listing in Vienna will facilitate and accelerate the growth of Creactives, as well as its visibility among the international financial community. I am proud of being part of this initiative that today represents one of the few European listing projects during this difficult situation under the full lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic."

Paolo Gamberoni, CEO of Creactives and Executive President of Creactives Group, declares: "We founded Creactives as a cost reduction consulting company in 2000. With the experience collected helping large customers in different industries like process manufacturing, utilities, oil and gas, and logistics, during the years we started developing a new Artificial Intelligence technology aimed at finding saving opportunities in their supply chains and assure data quality at the source. In our twenty-year history, we transformed our company into a pure technology player and delivered several big projects, with a large amount of multilingual and cryptic data to be analyzed. Thanks to this experience we built a company that became a reference point in the field of Artificial Intelligence solutions for the supply chain industry. Leveraging on these results, we decided to take a step further and we developed the vision of a leading group in the Applied Artificial Intelligence field, able to build technologies to address real-life business problems which are too complex to be solved through conventional approaches. Thanks to the meeting with Nico, Massimo and Balaban Technology we translated this vision into a concrete project. This is where the story of Creactives Group begins. We are building a new kind of player on the market, grounded in a history full of passion for talents and technology innovation."

Nazzareno Gorni, CEO of MailUp Group, the marketing technology hub listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, investor in Creactives Group, declares: "I am very happy to be an investor in Creactives Group. Starting from my personal entrepreneurial experience with MailUp, where we built a global and publicly listed technology company from scratch, I believe that the sales of niche SaaS products in vertical segments is a winning strategy to scale rapidly on the international market. In this regards, I see a lot of potential in Creactives, which is currently selling its solutions in the supply chain industry. It is not common to find an Italian scale-up able to sell cutting edge - research-driven - Artificial Intelligence technologies internationally to well known enterprise clients. Congrats to all the team and looking forwards to see what Creactives Group will become in the next 5 years!".

(Ende)