Pleo, one of Europe’s leading spend management platforms, is celebrating another year of triple digit SaaS growth, leading to group revenue increase of over 50% for FY23.
This growth was fuelled largely by a surge in its customer base up 39% from the previous year, reaching to date, over 33,000 active companies. The number of active users also saw an increase of 37% compared year on year.
In 2023 Pleo took great strides to enhance the user experience for its larger customers as it moved into the mid-market space. The company invested significantly across the business, repositioning from expense management to a much broader business spending platform to ensure its customers have access to a full suite of tools to help them better manage their finances.
Towards the end of the year, Pleo launched its partnership with Oracle NetSuite and launched Pleo Invoices to its customers in France, Spain and The Netherlands, following its successful launch in the UK and Germany in 2022.
More recently, to give its customers even greater financial flexibility, Pleo secured a €40m debt financing deal with HSBC Innovation Banking. This strategic deal enables Pleo to extend its existing credit offering into new countries, support higher amounts and offer additional currency options. It presents a valuable financial resource for businesses, offering the ability to cover both significant business investments and incidental expenses, therefore ensuring smooth cash-flow management and facilitating uninterrupted operations.
Pleo also launched a US Wallet, enabling multi-entity companies based in Europe to support US employees with Pleo cards and associated spend management solutions. This enables businesses to achieve a single consolidated view of all holistic business expenditure across markets, enabling efficient financial tracking and control with expense management and invoice solutions all in the same platform.
From a hiring perspective, Pleo welcomed Søren Westh Lonning to the business as its Chief Financial Officer, bringing a wealth of experience and strengthening ambitious growth plans that will help to further cement Pleo’s footprint. His appointment, complementing the existing leadership team, comes at a pivotal time as the platform focuses on driving efficient growth across Europe.
While an increase in numbers has been seen across all key markets, central to Pleo’s healthy performance has been incredibly strong growth in the Dutch market, which has been the company’s fastest growing market, which saw over 300% growth in customers in FY23.
The Dutch market continues to go from strength to strength, more recently launching an integration with Twinfield, part of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting, a major player in online accounting, and fostering strategic relationships through the roll-out of its formalised Partner Programme.
Having just opened new offices in Paris, Lisbon, Madrid and Chennai, Pleo is in a prime position to capitalise on the significant growth it’s already enjoyed.
So far Pleo has raised €350M and is proud to maintain a robust balance sheet, with many more innovative plans in the pipeline.
Jeppe Rindom, Founder and CEO of Pleo, comments: “We are thrilled to announce such strong business results from the last financial year, which are testament to the hard work across the team. Over 33,000 companies across 16 markets trust Pleo as a vital asset to their business spending, reaffirming our status as the leading provider of spend management solutions in Europe. Despite the changing and unpredictable market environment over the past 18 months, our customers continue to see undeniable value in Pleo’s platform and we’re excited to accelerate our growth even further in our next financial year.”
Andreas Bernstrom, Chairman Pleo / Senior Investment Director Kinnevik: “Another very strong year delivered by the Pleo team, which is made even more impressive considering the uncertain macro environment. This is testament to the continued focus that Pleo have had on developing products and services that resonate with their 33,000 customers across Europe. Pleo is well positioned to continue this trajectory in 2024 as well.”