Losses widen at Stripe Europe to $1.1bn after employee ‘liquidity event’

A Dublin-registered arm of Stripe, the Irish-American payments company founded by the Collison brothers, lost more than $1.1 billion (€999.6 million) last year as share-based payments to employees surged in 2023.

New accounts for Stripe Payments International Holdings – a holding company for the group’s activities outside the United States, including in Europe, Asia and the Middle East – reveal a sharp jump in turnover at the payments giant. Revenues were more than 30 per cent up from the 2022 figure of $2.9 billion, at $3.8 billion last year.

Administrative costs, which includes the cost of salaries and other payments to employees, also increased due, the directors said, to “once-off incremental share-based payments” during the period. Stripe Europe paid out close to $323.5 million in share-based payments in the year, according to the filings, up from $12.9 million in 2022.

These one-off costs are associated with a “liquidity” event announced in March 2023 after Stripe raised $6.5 billion in a Series I fundraise. Those funds were used to disburse money to employees, both former and current, who had share options with the company, resulting in their shares vesting at the same time and being recognised as costs for the financial year.

It meant that staff costs at the business more than doubled to $637.1 million last year, despite staff numbers remaining stable at 1,765.

Sales costs, meanwhile, climbed by more than 71 per cent to close to $4 billion.

In a report attached to the accounts, the directors said the increase in revenues and “associated cost of sales” have increased due to growth in the business and increased “user adoption”. The jump in costs also relates to an increase in “research and development costs”, they said.

Earlier this week, Axios reported that Sequoia Capital has completed an $861 million purchase of shares in Stripe, a transaction that values the payments company at $70 billion.

In July, the venture capital firm had offered to buy Stripe shares at $27.51 from limited partners in its funds, according to people familiar with the matter.

The payments company, one of the most valuable tech start-ups in the world, signed for 156,000sq ft of office space at Wilton Park One in earlier this year, in what was the biggest single office leasing since the fourth quarter of 2022 and a multiple of the biggest transaction in the first three months of 2024.

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