CentralNic Group PLC (AIM:CNIC) told investors that strong growth experienced during 2021 has continued into 2022.
Revenue generation in the first quarter to date is materially ahead of revenue growth rates implied by market consensus expectations, the company said in a statement. The strong performance is driven by the online marketing segment, it added.
Management has yet to fully ascertain the expected impact on full-year performance, but, said it should at least be ‘at or above’ the high end of market expectations.
"We are encouraged by the organic growth that CentralNic is continuing to deliver so far in 2022, and, in particular, the strong performance of our online marketing division,” said chief executive Ben Crawford.
“Our privacy-safe solutions are gaining traction, while competing solutions that collect private user data, and so require GDPR or IDFA consent, lose market share.
“Whilst it is still very early in our financial year, we are extremely encouraged by the continuation of the growth that we saw in 2021 and look forward to giving a further update on trading at the time of our 2021 results release on 28 February 2022."
The company also today announced details of acquisitions, picking up Fireball Search GmbH along with the .ruhr Top-Level Domain (TLD). In aggregate it is spending €600,000 on the acquisitions.
Fireball, founded in 1996, was once Germany’s leading search engine and was merged into Lycos in the early 2000s. It retains high consumer awareness and was relaunched as an independent business in 2016 with a new version of the service, specialising as a privacy protected search engine (powered by Bing).
CentralNIC said the acquisition opens up new traffic sources to monetise through its proprietary online marketing tools and adds alternative monetisation channels to generate revenues from internet traffic.
In domain names, the .ruhr is the domain address for the urban agglomeration centred around the river Ruhr in Germany, consisting of c.50 cities, including Dortmund and Essen. The region is home to some 5mln inhabitants and the top level domain currently has around 10,000 registered domain names.