Wildstone has completed a £350 million infrastructure refinancing with Deutsche Bank to expand its out-of-home advertising footprint further around the UK and Europe.
The London firm, founded in 2010, has developed a portfolio of over 5,000 OOH assets across the UK, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands and Germany.
Wildstone says it will accelerate the digitisation of the industry. It is converting hundreds of traditional paper billboards to digital at a time of unprecedented digital OOH market growth: the global market size is forecast to double from $23 billion today to $46bn by 2029.
It is growing at four times the rate of the paper OOH market.
“Completing a refinancing of this magnitude in today’s market is testament to the quality of our estate, our people and most importantly our partner tenants,” said CEO and founder Damian Cox.
“This industry-first debt facility will enable us to further expand our portfolio across Europe, aggressively scale our industry-transforming digitisation efforts and increase our operational flexibility.”
Fellow London startup VIIOH, which featured in 14th spot in our MarTech 50 ranking last year, has developed a supply side platform connecting programmatic buyers and sellers in a premium marketplace – making outdoor advertising more accessible to brands.
Started by France-headquartered global OOH advertising giant JCDecaux – with a minority stake held by data specialist and modelling company Veltys – VIOOH launched in June 2018 with the aim of growing the OOH industry to compete with digital advertising such as search and mobile.