Irish 'unicorn' tech firm Wayflyer has enjoyed ‘substantial growth’ in 2022 and has roughly doubled numbers employed this year.
That is according to a company spokeswoman who said that "over the last year, Wayflyer has emerged as the largest revenue-based finance operator in Europe".
Wayflyer provides revenue-based financing and marketing analytics for online businesses and the spokeswoman was commenting on new accounts for Wayflyer’s Irish unit where losses of €22.28m were sustained last year due to expansion costs.
The 2021 post tax losses of €22.28m follow post tax losses of €2.9m at Wayflyer Ltd in 2020.
The firm’s Irish business represents only a very small portion of Wayflyer’s global business and does not include the firm’s international revenues that account for around 95pc of all sales.
Founded by ceo, Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse in September 2019, Wayflyer also has a significant cost base here where numbers employed at the Dublin based Wayflyer Ltd last year increased more than five fold from 15 to 85 as staff costs soared from €1.7m to €9.4m including share based payments of €842,788.
The Irish based firm’s turnover for 2021 was €1.3m generated from rendering of services to other group companies
In February, the company became Ireland’s sixth unicorn, after raising $150m in funding to achieve a $1.6bn valuation, and doing so in just 2.5 years.
Earlier this year, Wayflyer stated that it expects to advance up to $2.5bn to ecommerce firms this year, up from a previous estimate of $1bn.
The 2021 loss takes account of loan interest payments of €1.4m.
The Wayflyer spokeswoman said: "While we do not publicly disclose or comment on our financial performance, Wayflyer had substantial growth in 2022."
"This year alone, we secured over $550m worth of debt from world-leading financial players including J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse, while also expanding into several new European markets," she said.
"Our focus in 2023 will be on consolidating our position in these existing markets and continuing to lead the growth of the wider category," she added.
Wayflyer is to publish the business’s consolidated accounts next year which will reflect the group performance for 2021.
The Irish based arm’s balance sheet was greatly strengthened in 2021 with its shareholder funds from €4.22m to €45.33m and this was through its share premium account increasing from €7.26m to €69.8m.
The company’s cash funds last year increased from €334,624 to €6.03m.
