In preparation for a stock exchange listing, it is important to show the prospects realistically. The minimum expectation for the near future can be derived from the past via the sequence of annual turnover snapshots. Such a steady increase over years would be a dream for almost all other companies. For Aimondo it is the lower trend line of a trend channel open to the upside. And this is now being opened further with the internationalisation that has begun. The exponential growth potential that actually exists has been heavily impaired by external influencing factors in the last two years – it has been exploited anew since the summer of 2022.
Heinrich Müller, CEO of Aimondo AG, summarises the restraining forces of the past two years: “The accumulation of external influences took a lot out of us. The impact of the pandemic shifted the priorities of our customers – otherwise we would have continued the upward trend of around 20% per month that we started back then in 2020. This was joined by a grotesque official thought construct against our German company, which began to question the existence of our technology and our company in an absurd form. Even our numerous well-known customers and fact-based statements were not considered a convincing argument against this arbitrariness. This continues as a skidmark right up to the present. We step on the gas and the authorities put on the brakes. In addition, we now have new overlapping challenges with war and inflation. There are solutions for everything, which we implement as a team. Our highly qualified employees are the decisive capital and more valuable than any additional euro. Their motivation is unbroken. Cohesion and group strength are strengthened by the challenges.”
The listing, already prepared for 2021, was postponed at the time. “Every good team can segment a certain number of simultaneously occurring problems, master them and grow from them. In the situation, it was prudent not to force the revenue expansion pace against all adverse odds. We continued to vigorously pursue technical development, which we had sufficient resources to do, and took product performance to an even higher level. This is now starting to pay off” adds Heinrich Müller, who also heads the German Aimondo GmbH.
Thomas Baierlein, member of the board of directors of Aimondo and primarily responsible for internationalisation, confirms this: “Probably the world’s most important management consultancy with a focus on the pricing of internationally positioned medium-sized companies and globally operating corporations now relies on our artificial intelligence. This is the accolade for our Aimondo Group. We are just outgrowing our start-up status. After all, this partner has won several major awards as the best consultancy for marketing, brand and pricing.”
Vorsprung durch Technik – this is how Audi once described the transformation from the bourgeoisly labelled normal car to the technological leader of the automotive industry at the time, starting in 1971. Audi thus prepared the ground for today’s globally successful premium vehicles. The Aimondo team also sees a comparable quantum leap for e-commerce and online trade in the 2022 high-performance package. As a means of increasing the success of Aimondo’s customers as quickly as it does substantially. Communicating this fact in many languages is a core task for the first months of 2023. The entire management board supports the industry expertise by founding an additional development and consulting company next month as a 100% subsidiary and service provider for all customers as well as the companies of Aimondo AG.
This increases the group’s enterprise value – and together with some less striking structural improvements, optimises the picture for a stock market listing. Shareholders can therefore expect more value per share.
In the end, it is performance that counts. To put it bluntly, success is the “waste product” of good work. That Aimondo is doing many things right is confirmed by a recently completed performance test of a new client in Switzerland. This is a leading company that is very well known in Switzerland in the areas of multichannel retailing for home textiles, high-quality bed linen, fashion, home and garden articles and more. Already in the first cooperation stage with Aimondo data, an EBIT growth of around 20% can be achieved for these articles by optimising interventions in the end prices through sales growth and the use of differential margins for the TOP 20% of the assortment.
René Grübel, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Aimondo Group, underlines this successful beginning of what will probably be a long-lasting business friendship with the words: “20% more EBIT in the top-seller area is balance-sheet worthy. It is at least as interesting when we look at the long tail, i.e. the assortment that sells out rather slowly. We usually find a number of articles in this range that have been languishing in a deep sleep because their price has not been optimised. And raising this potential gradually increases the number of top sellers. I don’t want to describe the expected effect yet, but I’ll come back to it. Because those are the real surprises.”
In conclusion, we hope for the sake of one of the most promising start-ups that Covid, war, energy prices, government unbill and inflation will be enough of the unloved external braking for the time being. And that the young developers around head of technology Müller can exploit their performance potential around artificial intelligence in e-commerce without hindrance. The Aimondo development pool in Düsseldorf on the Rhine is already harmoniously complemented by the small but fine technical team from three nations in Cyprus. The proof that sun, a beach by the sea and an almost perfect digital infrastructure complement each other is already being provided there every day.
From today’s perspective, the planned IPO and a successful listing on the stock exchange are again within reach. The performance as well as the economic development of the Aimondo Group agrees here. “The waves of the still unfavourable environmental factors will also smooth out again,” concludes Baierlein, a successful manager with decades of international C-level experience, who is already steering the extremely promising path to internationality with the help of his many contacts across national borders.
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