Next Fifteen Communications Group PLC (AIM:NFC) said trading is ahead of expectations as it announced two bolt-on acquisitions.
The communications and advertising group, which agreed to buy peer M&C Saatchi in May, said revenue growth has continued to be strong, helped by the strength of the US dollar.
For the three-month period to 30 April 2022, Next 15 Group’s total revenues increased by about 68% year-on-year compared with the same period last year, to £130mln. Organic revenue grew roughly 37%.
Adjusted profit before tax for the same three-month period to 30 April 2022 is also ahead of management expectations.
Performance has been strong across all four areas of the Next 15 Group, with each segment showing encouraging organic revenue growth of at least 15% to the end of April.
Next 15’s businesses in the US have been performing above expectations, the onboarding of Engine has been progressing well and the new Mach49 contract, announced on 23 February 2022, is off to an encouraging start, the company said.
As for the acquisitions, Next Fifteen said they will strengthen the largest businesses in its Customer Delivery segment - Activate and Agent 3.
The digital marketing company said Activate has acquired the entire outstanding membership interests of Green Leads Holdings while Agent 3 has bought IT Telemarketing Services (ITTS).
Green Leads is a US-based demand generation business that uses a range of products and services to help sales functions develop, and set up specific appointments, on behalf of business-to-business (B2B) technology businesses. This acquisition will allow Activate to expand its high-value lead generation products and provide the business with additional strong leadership.
Green Leads had revenue of US$4.5mln in 2021.
ITTS offers a combination of digital marketing and telemarketing products to generate high-quality first-party data for its customers' sales activities. These services will be integrated with Agent 3’s ABM offering, which like Activate, is targeted towards the B2B technology sector. For the year to 28 February, 2022 ITTS generated revenue of £1.2mln.
Both acquisitions are expected to enhance earnings in the current financial year.
“These are relatively small but important additions to our Customer Delivery businesses. Both are focused on first-party data in the last mile of the lead generation process and offer services that we had previously outsourced. These deals will enable both businesses to offer a better, more integrated set of products in this high growth area of our business,” said Tim Dyson, the chief executive officer of Next 15.