CORRECTED - Bulgaria's Puzl Office BG [NOT Puzl Web Development] to invest [NOT buy] 15 mln euro in co-working space [NOT offices] in Hungary – report

Also please read in the lead paragraph:

Bulgarian coworking company Puzl Office BG, operating under the brand name Puzl CowOrKing, will invest about 15 million euro ($16.6 million) in the expansion of the co-working space it offers in Hungary's capital Budapest, local media reported. (Corrects the name of the company and removes information that it will buy new offices.)

Please, also note that a description of the company's business has been added to the fifth paragraph and that the date of the company's establishment has been revised.

A corrected version of the story follows.

Bulgarian real estate company Puzl Office BG, operating under the brand name Puzl CowOrKing, will invest about 15 million euro ($16.6 million) in the expansion of the co-working space it offers in Hungary's capital Budapest, local media reported.

The company has plans for further expansion in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which also include Bucharest, Prague, Vienna, Athens, Skopje and Belgrade, Thibaut Taittinger, the company's CEO, said as quoted by local news outlet Trendingtopics.bg in an interview published on Thursday.

"Probably we’ll raise some equity funding in our UK company and we’ll be raising loans. We give 8% interest per year, for a six-year period, and during this period we’ll repay 50% of the principal on a quarterly basis. We are looking at the European VC market, not touching the US for now," Taittinger said regarding the financing of the expansion project.

The company will be raising the money in phases - in 2020 it needs to raise 10 million euro.

Puzl Office BG, established in 2018, is fully owned by UK-based Puzl Web Ltd, according to data available on the website of the Bulgarian commercial register. The company acquires old industrial buildings and transforms them into workplaces for the IT industry.

Puzl Office BG is currently focused on Budapest because the city is bigger and attracts more foreigners. At the moment the coworking market in Sofia is among the most competitive in the CEE region, while Budapest has less coworking spaces, the CEO commented.

As regards the opening of a second location in Bulgaria, the company thinks that it is more important to take a step abroad.

Within the past four years, Puzl CowOrKing has evolved into a co-working of over 7,008 sq m. Over 90 companies, including startups, engineering teams of larger companies along with freelancers, are currently working there.

($ =0.902 euro)