MASHUP

Mashup: to create something new by combining elements from two or more sources.
We attract opportunities, capital and talent…and combine them to create new profitable realities,
as part of a virtuous circle that contributes positively to our world.

About us

 

Small businesses. Big opportunities. Lots of them.

Mashup Ireland is a small Irish investment group with BIG plans.

Listed on Nasdaq (click here), we’re a group of hard-working entrepreneurs with a strong track record of creating tangible value.

Focused on Ireland, we attract opportunities, capital and talent which we mashup to create and enhance the value of businesses and property assets.

We do this by using our own capital to create, incubate and nurture new businesses, acquire and grow existing business, turn distressed businesses around and actively enhance the value of property and other assets in a range of ways. This involves partnering with talented entrepreneurs and business owners.

Starting with no capital whatsoever, over the past 15 years our management team and operating partners have created over €19m of tangible value from these kinds of value-added commercial property projects and Irish SME projects including Autofulfil, Schoolbooks.ie, Kollect, DessertFirst, Fettle and Adhdnow.

If a few individuals can create €19m of value with no initial capital…then what could a Nasdaq-listed group achieve by focusing its resources on this €420bn per annum Irish small and medium sized enterprise (SME) market, that is starved of risk capital and where no other listed companies operate?

We’re only getting started and invite you to join us on our journey as a shareholder, operating partner and / or lender.

Sound good?

Meet the team

How I can buy shares in Mashup Ireland?

What are Mashup Ireland’s current projects?

WHY IRISH SMALL & MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES (SMEs)?

Large market opportunity:

Ireland has more than 350k SMEs, generating a turnover more than €420bn per annum. SMEs (<250 persons employed) account for 99.8% of all enterprises and 69.2% of people employed in Ireland.

Significant pain exists:

The Group has the resources needed to support Irish SMEs, business owners and founders with a range of challenges and pain points that they face including access to capital, succession planning, attracting talent, utilisation of technology for advancement and green transition.

Irish SME investor competition is low:

No other listed companies are targeting investing and supporting Irish SMEs. Only 3.3% of the assets of Irish banks are advances to SMEs.

Irish SME entry valuations are low:

Valuation multiples of 2-6 times EBITDA are common for controlling interests. There are extremely limited options for owners of minority stakes in Irish SMEs to sell to third parties.

Potential to develop competitive advantage and scale:

Numerous opportunities exist to develop competitive advantage for the Group and its portfolio of SME companies within this €420bn market.

Favourable tax treatment:

Investing in stakes in Irish SMEs is mainly a tax-free business (i.e. no capital gains tax on gains and no corporation tax on dividends received). In addition, Irish SMEs are subject to a low 12.5% rate of tax on their trading profits.

Strong policy support for Irish SMEs from the Irish government:

80% government guarantees available for certain SME loans; attractive tax-incentives to encourage retail investing in SMEs; low-cost insolvency restructuring scheme for SMEs in place and a host of other supports available.

Domestic savings are high in Ireland and options very low for retail:

Irish retail savers currently have more than €161 billion of cash on deposit / in cash savings products at very low interest rates. This backdrop presents the Group with numerous opportunities to support the Group’s strategy of driving its blended cost of non-dilutive capital down over time.

Ireland is an attractive location for investment:

Business-friendly environment, skilled workforce, proximity to EU markets, strong economic performance, government support and incentives, innovation ecosystem, high quality of life and stable political environment.

Public equity market investors have very limited access to invest in Ireland’s domestic economy:

Of the 31 ordinary shares that are listed on the Irish stock market, only 10 of these are in domestic-focused companies.

No investment opportunities:

Currently exist for public equity market investors to gain exposure to Irish SMEs.

Potential to replicate in other countries:

The learnings from the Group’s experiences in Ireland’s SME market could potentially be used to develop a playbook to replicate this success in other countries where similarly attractive SME investment dynamics exist.

There are no other listed groups that focus on opportunities within the €420bn per annum Irish SME sector.

We believe a very significant amount of value can be created and unlocked by enabling a selective portfolio of Irish SMEs and entrepreneurs to benefit from some of the benefits of being listed on the stock market, without incurring the costs of a listing.

Examples of these benefits include increased ability to attract capital, talent and opportunities, access to transaction skills and experience, access to tax structuring capabilities, access to risk reduction capabilities, access to partnership opportunities, opportunities to monetise minority shareholdings and (in time) access to valuable shared services and lower costs.

To capture a portion of this value, our strategy is to acquire controlling and non-controlling interests in Irish SMEs and work in partnership with entrepreneurs and SME business owners to enhance the profitability and value of the SMEs we invest in.

Our main focus is developing long-term stable cash flows from the SMEs and projects we invest in and actively supporting the growth of these over time.

Our secondary interest is participating in opportunistic value-added transactions that offer very attractive risk-return profiles to the group.

We adopt a highly active approach to capital allocation: we look for opportunities to recycle our capital and have a range of plans to reduce our blended cost of capital over time as our portfolio grows and benefits from diversification and asset-backing.

From practical perspective, implementing this strategy involves:

 

  1. Attracting opportunities, talent and capital  and managing the ‘mashup’ of these three elements into the creation of value that can be monetized in a variety of ways.

     

  2. Setting up new businesses in partnership with suitable operating partners / management teams.
  1. Acquiring stakes in existing SMEs and working constructively with their management teams to support them to create value.

     

  2. Acquiring more property assets that offer very attractive risk / return characteristics, especially through the design and implementation of active value-enhancement strategies.

     

  3. Identifying opportunities for portfolio businesses to work together on projects for mutually beneficial value-creation  and  synergies.

     

  4. Introducing and developing selective shared services, aimed at enabling the Group’s portfolio SME businesses to avail of some of the advantages of being part of a larger listed group, without having to incur the costs of being listed themselves.

     

  5. Adopting a dynamic approach to effective capital allocation, combined with effective asset-backed strategies to drive down the Group’s blended cost of non-dilutive capital over time.