How Ignis saved time and streamlined a €200 million global renewables transaction using Ideals

Overview

Headquartered in Madrid, Ignis is one of Spain’s largest and most successful renewable energy developers, with over 550 employees in 8 countries around the world.

In 2020, the company was looking for new investors to fund the next stage of its global expansion plans. However, the team’s document-sharing arrangements lacked effective security and access controls, and made it difficult to efficiently track investor queries. 

They looked for an online platform that offered both advanced security and tools to control the flow of information and save time. Laura Martínez Fúster, Ignis’s M&A Manager, and Rocío Pérez Gómez de la Torre from the firm’s Corporate Development team, confirmed that the deciding factors were “efficiency, value for money and customer service.”

After using Ideals to successfully complete a €200 million deal, Ignis continues to use the platform for its global transactions, saving at least one working hour every day thanks to more efficient processes.

The context

Ignis was founded in 2015 with a mission to promote a more efficient and sustainable energy model. Within 4 years, it had become Spain’s main renewable energies developer and expanded rapidly into Europe, America, and Asia.

As well as developing projects, the company manages operations and maintenance for energy production and in 2017 made its first move into construction with the largest solar project in Europe.

By 2020, the Ignis portfolio included more than 14 GW of renewable energy under construction in Spain and a further 8 GW across the European, North American, and Asia-Pacific markets. To continue its ambitious growth strategy and build a more sustainable energy system, the company now needed to find additional funding.

Previously the company had used a popular file-sharing platform to manage various transactions, including financing for projects, but the team was worried about the risks. Laura Martínez Fúster says, “Everyone at Ignis could access the platform so anyone could edit documents, plus we were struggling to keep track of questions from potential bidders and who was answering them.”

It was at this point that the company decided to look for a virtual data room (VDR).

Key challenges

While dealing with potential investors, Ignis needed a VDR that offered a secure, user-friendly experience for stakeholders from all over the world, while also improving collaboration across its global operations. 

The key requirements were:

• A secure platform for sharing a high volume of confidential documents
• Options to upload different document types
• Different access permission levels that were easy to customize
• 24/7 access from anywhere in the world
• A straightforward Q&A process for managing queries from bidders

As this was their first time working with a VDR provider, the team also wanted responsive customer support.

Solutions

Having considered several VDR solutions, Laura says Ignis chose Ideals because: “It’s intuitive and easy to use, very comprehensive, and competitively priced.”

During the investment process, Ideals enabled the company to:

• Watermark or encrypt confidential documents before sharing with investors
• Rapidly respond to queries and track progress using the Q&A tool
• Maintain security by allocating different permission levels for various groups
• Adjust permission levels, e.g. when an early expression of interest proved serious
• Create customized reports to track activity by user, group or location
• Save almost one working day per week in staff time compared with using other solutions

Laura loved the control offered by tracking functions, such as: “Being able to see the platform from the point of view of each user group, so when we move files we can make sure that everyone can still see them!” 

But it was the high level of customer support that really stood out. “Whenever we’ve needed help using the platform we’ve received personalized attention,” Ignis’ team told us. Rocío Pérez says one of her favorite examples was when Ignis needed to migrate large quantities of data, and “the Ideals team helped us to move all the documents, saving us a lot of work and time for our users.”

In 2021, the transaction was finally concluded and global renewables group Vortex Energy acquired a minority stake in Ignis for more than €200 million.

The future

Since the success of the Vortex transaction, Ignis has used Ideals for sales of energy assets in Spain and abroad, as well as for financing multiple new renewables projects. The company also uses the platform to share documents with its investment bank advisers.

Ignis currently has multiple projects with Ideals and both Laura and Rocio are delighted with the efficiency savings, saying, “We can set up a new project in as little as an hour.”

When asked what they most like about Ideals, they list security, personalized customer support, ease of use, and value for money. And their 3 top functions are: 

• The Q&A tool, which gives them streamlined, secure communication
• Control of the permission levels (something other tools lack)
• Reports on user activity to gauge investor interest

Asked if they would recommend Ideals to anyone needing a VDR, their immediate response is: “Definitely!”