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This article is also available in German: Vom Relais aus Sofia in den SDAX: Wie Shelly zum geplanten 1,2-Mrd.-Euro-Übernahmeziel wurde
Status: proposed, not completed. On 24 September 2026 Schneider Electric announced an intended voluntary public takeover offer for Shelly Group SE at €70 per share, valuing the company at about €1.2 billion. The offer is conditional and has not closed. Everything below describes a proposed transaction.
A Bulgarian technology company that began as a mobile-services business in Sofia now sells smart-home devices in more than 100 countries, sits in Germany's SDAX index and has attracted a bid from one of Europe's largest industrial groups. By the company's own account it is the first Bulgarian company in Deutsche Börse's DAX index family, and press describes it as Bulgaria's second tech unicorn. This article explains what Shelly does, reconstructs the route from the Bulgarian Stock Exchange via Frankfurt, and asks what other founders can take from it.
Shelly builds small, inexpensive smart-home and building-automation devices. Its signature product is the smart relay: a module that fits behind an existing wall switch or into a light fitting and makes it controllable from a phone, a schedule or another system, without rewiring the home. The range has since grown to smart plugs, sensors (for example water-leak sensors), energy meters and DIN-rail products for electrical cabinets. Forbes describes Shelly as a Bulgarian brand that has moved from an enthusiast favourite to something accessible to ordinary users with basic DIY skills.
On scale, Shelly's Investor Report 2025 states that more than 28.8 million devices have been sold, 11 million of them in the last twelve months, in more than 100 countries. It counts 2.7 million cloud users at the end of 2025, up 46% on the year, and estimates about 5.6 million households worldwide use Shelly products. Third- and fourth-generation devices rose from about 20% of revenue in 2024 to about 60% in 2025. The company has subsidiaries in Germany, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Poland, the United States and China.
The company's roots are older than the brand. According to published company histories, Dimitar Dimitrov and Svetlin Todorov built a Sofia business, Teracomm, in 2003 around mobile value-added services. It was combined into the holding company Allterco in 2010, and Allterco Robotics was created in 2015 for IoT products. The Shelly 1 open-API relay launched in August 2018 and became the breakthrough product. In July 2023 the company renamed itself Shelly Group after its main product line. (Founding and early-product dates come from secondary company profiles; the company's own history pages should be checked before they are quoted elsewhere.)
That makes the commercial Shelly story short: about eight years from the first relay to a proposed €1.2 billion takeover, on a corporate foundation built over two decades.
Primary documents: Shelly's announcement, Schneider's announcement and the notice of registration with the FSC. These are transaction-party documents; their statements about strategic fit are the parties' own. Independent coverage includes heise, Capital.bg and Reuters.
Schneider's stated rationale is that Shelly's software-led home energy platform, combined with Schneider's technology, can deliver “the next level of Energy Intelligence across residential, retrofit and small commercial buildings” (quoted from the announcement as reported by trade press). The logic is easy to follow: homes are adding rooftop solar, heat pumps, batteries and electric cars, and Shelly's devices install into existing wiring. That is the parties' view, but it is a coherent one.
| When | Step |
| 2003 | Teracomm founded in Sofia by Dimitar Dimitrov and Svetlin Todorov |
| 2010 / 2015 | Holding company Allterco formed; Allterco Robotics created for IoT products |
| December 2016 | Listing on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange |
| August 2018 | Shelly 1 open-API relay launched |
| November 2021 | Secondary listing in the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange; market capitalisation estimated at about €277 million |
| April 2024 | Admission to Xetra, Deutsche Börse's electronic trading system |
| June 2024 – September 2025 | Share placements with institutional investors, including founder placements in 2025, to widen the free float |
| August 2025 | Market valuation passes $1 billion; press describes Shelly as Bulgaria's second tech unicorn after Payhawk |
| 10 April 2026 | Inclusion in the SDAX; the company describes itself as the first Bulgarian company in the DAX index family |
| 24 / 28 September 2026 | Schneider announces the intended offer; it is registered with the FSC |
Sources: AmCham Bulgaria on the Frankfurt listing; Shelly on Xetra; Capital.bg on the $1 billion milestone; Novinite on the unicorn status; Shelly on the SDAX.
Novinite also reports that the shares debuted in Sofia in 2016 at 1.45 leva and reached about 89 leva by June 2025, a roughly sixty-fold rise. That is press-reported and not adjusted by us for corporate actions such as share splits.
Our reading: Shelly is a Bulgarian-engineered, Bulgarian-owned product company that sells to Europe. Schneider's commitment is to keep exactly the engineering and headquarters side for at least three years. For Bulgarian founders that is the point worth noticing: a buyer of this size is paying for the product and the platform while committing to the location where they are built.
When the Frankfurt secondary listing began in 2021, the company's stated aim was easier access to the shares for investors worldwide and better prospects for raising capital. Frankfurt is the largest capital market in the European Union, and Shelly kept its Bulgarian listing. The steps that followed built the investor base deliberately:
One distinction is worth keeping. The record supports Frankfurt as a visibility and liquidity builder. It does not by itself show that the listing caused Schneider's bid: the founders hold about 57% and negotiated directly, and the public shareholders' role is to accept a price. The data that would measure the listing's contribution, such as shareholder geography, Sofia-versus-Frankfurt volumes and analyst coverage over time, was not available to us, and we say so rather than infer it.
| Year | Revenue | DACH share of revenue |
| 2021 | €30.4 million | not reviewed |
| 2022 | €48.1 million | not reviewed |
| 2023 | €74.9 million | 49% |
| 2024 | €106.7 million | 47% |
| 2025 | €149.7 million | about 41% (our calculation from €62.0 million) |
Revenue grew roughly fivefold between 2021 and 2025, with 2025 up 40.3% against estimated market growth of 10–15% according to the company. The DACH share has eased only because the rest of Europe grew faster, while DACH revenue itself kept rising. Profitability grew with scale: adjusted 2025 EBIT was €37.7 million (a 25.2% margin), and in the first half of 2026 the company reported revenue of €68.3 million (+26.5%), EBIT of €17.7 million (a 26.0% margin), net profit of €15.4 million and cash of €31.9 million. It guides to €195–205 million revenue and €47–52 million EBIT for 2026.
Sources: FY 2025 results, H1 2026 results; earlier years from Shelly's annual results announcements.
These multiples are our own arithmetic on the headline equity value, not enterprise values: net debt at the offer date is not published in the documents we reviewed, and Shelly reported €31.9 million of cash at 30 June 2026.
| Metric | Basis | At €1.2bn |
| Equity value / revenue | FY 2025 actual (€149.7 million) | about 8.0x |
| Equity value / revenue | FY 2026 guidance midpoint (€200 million) | about 6.0x |
| Equity value / adjusted EBIT | FY 2025 (€37.7 million) | about 32x |
| Equity value / EBIT | FY 2026 guidance midpoint (€49.5 million) | about 24x |
Read these as a range for a fast-growing, 25%-margin hardware-and-software platform rather than as a verdict. Three notes on method: we found no published EBITDA, so we use EBIT; the 2025 EBIT excludes a non-cash accrual under the management share programme; and “about €1.2 billion” is rounded, since the share count implied by the free-float figures points to roughly €1.27 billion at €70 on every share, which would raise each multiple by about six percent. The offer document should settle this. Sell-side commentary after the announcement viewed the deal as a sensible bolt-on for Schneider; we treat that as opinion.
For the location question, see our guide to where to base a business in Bulgaria.
Transaction documents
Company reporting
Independent press and market sources
Verified 1 October 2026. The takeover is proposed and conditional and has not closed; we will update this article as the offer document, regulatory decisions, acceptance levels and any revised terms are published. Valuation multiples, the 2025 DACH share and the implied share count are Start in BG's own calculations from the figures cited. Start in BG has no financial relationship with Schneider Electric, Shelly Group, its founders or any of the exchanges named. This article is independent general information, not investment, legal or tax advice.
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