Acenta Group: Executing on the Swedish overestablishment

We are initiating coverage of Acenta Group, an international full-service provider within the padel industry. The company’s operations include sales, installation, customization, and ongoing service of padel courts. In addition, the company operates the e-commerce platform Sport of Padel, its own padel brand Peliga, and organizes the tournament Acenta Padel Tour. Acenta is building an integrated padel ecosystem to increase customer loyalty and drive scalable growth. The company primarily targets growth markets such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany.

Capitalizing on overestablishment in Sweden
Acenta acquires second-hand padel courts from facilities that were excessively established during the pandemic. These used courts are refurbished, sold, and subsequently installed in growth markets such as the United Kingdom and Ireland. Strong demand in growth markets has led Acenta to broaden its offering to also include new padel courts. Through either direct purchase or leasing agreements, Acenta sells padel courts and related solutions globally.

A misunderstood company – in our view
Demand for Acenta’s offering currently exceeds the company’s delivery capacity. Our assessment is that the biggest challenge ahead lies in access to working capital, as the company’s business model and leasing arrangements tie up capital. In our assumptions, we have based our outlook on the company being able to free up resources to accelerate its growth through new loans, factoring, and potentially other financing solutions. In Q1, net sales amounted to SEK 7.0 million, which indicates that the company is well on its way to achieving its financial targets. Acenta is often associated with the mature Swedish market, but we believe the growth potential in international markets is misunderstood.

Outlook
Acenta’s major challenge is to free up sufficient working capital to finance the build-up of inventory. The inventory is turned over quickly in the business given the current high demand. We believe the company has the potential to deliver on its financial targets if it succeeds in freeing up sufficient working capital. International expansion is progressing with ongoing projects in Ireland and the recently announced agreement in the United Kingdom. In the long term, we believe Acenta will strengthen its brand in the international market, which will also create growth opportunities in the rest of its product portfolio. In our base case, we see a fair value of SEK 17.8 on 2027E, which represents an upside of 77.1 percent.