NEWS23 July 2010

Ebiquity reports rise in revenue and a raft of international acquisitions

Financials UK

UK— Ebiquity, a media and marketing analytics group, has reported revenue up 15% to £21.2m and underlying operating profit up 8% to £2.6m for the year ended 30 April.

Organic revenue was £20.2m, an increase of 10% on the prior year. The company has made a number of recent acquisitions, but the two most notable – Xtreme Information and TMC – had only a marginal impact on results as the transactions were completed just 17 days before the year-end.

Ebiquity was already a 50% shareholder in TMC, a German media monitoring company, but bought out the remainder for £1.2m in cash and shares. Xtreme Information, meanwhile, is an advertising and media intelligence group based in London that captures and archives over 25,000 TV and press ads each month from more than 60 countries. Xtreme also captures internet banner adverts for Western Europe as well as cinema, radio and outdoor ads in the UK and Germany.

Michael Higgins, chairman of Ebiquity, said the Xtreme acquisition – a cash and shares deal worth £15.3m – “has addressed, in a very material way, the geographic reach and balance of our data capture capabilities and creates a business of scale that can rest comfortably alongside the domestic and international capabilities in our analytics business”.

The Analytics division, which houses Ebiquity’s media auditing, consultancy and marketing effectiveness businesses, increased revenue by 18% to £15.2m last year.

In March Ebiquity bought an 82.5% stake in Excellence Media in Paris in a cash deal worth up to £300,000. In May it acquired 51% of Billetts Germany and the company also recently took a majority position in Media Advisor in Milan.

CEO Michael Greenlees (pictured) said: “The company is now well positioned to exploit the global opportunity created through the development of market leading media monitoring and analytics businesses and we are excited by the opportunity that the next phase of our development affords.”

@RESEARCH LIVE

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