iCreate’s M&A strategy delivers revenue growth
PRESIDENT and CEO of iCreate Group Tyrone Wilson says the company’s mergers and acquisition strategy has delivered on diversifying and driving revenues.
He was speaking against the background of iCreate Group reporting a 231 per cent increase in revenues for the third quarter ended September 30, 2022, relative to the same period a year ago. Revenue for the period totalled $24.6 million compared with $7.97 million in 2021.
For the nine months iCreate generated revenue of $107.3 million, a 237 per cent increase over the $32.8 million as at September 30, 2021.
Wilson credited the “strong performance” to the company’s onboarding of a mix of new business clients as well as taking advantage of existing opportunities from the company’s pipeline. iCreate’s three divisions — education, advertising and e-commerce — all contributed to the strong revenue growth for the period.
“The company has remained keenly focused on delivering on our mergers and acquisitions [M&As] strategy which added advertising and e-commerce as new divisions in the group alongside our existing training division. We had a number of key initiatives implemented at the beginning of the financial year to allow us to maximise the value of our M&A strategy,” the CEO remarked.
The company’s M&A strategy is geared towards achieving its two-one investment goal of achieving US$2 million in revenue and US$1 million in net profit. Since the announcement of the strategy in January this year at an annual general meeting, the company has acquired GetPaid (formerly Mobile EDGE Solutions) and created an e-commerce division. It also recently completed the acquisition of VisualVibe.com to complement Vertical Creative, a content production company, in its advertising division.
Together, the acquisitions add new revenues to the company’s core revenue stream, iCreate Institute, which forms the company’s training and education division. The company has also entered the real estate space.
For the third quarter, iCreate reported net profit of $6.9 million, reversing its dip in the red in the year prior when it had a loss of $536,551. Over the nine months the company earned net profit of $23.4 million, jumping by 505 per cent.
Earnings per share for the nine months was $0.08 compared with $0.02.
Commenting on the year-on-year growth and the outlook on iCreate, Wilson told Jamaica Observer that all the divisions “will add significant growth going forward”.
For example, he said that iCreate Institute will continue to offer online classes as it streamlines “creative courses’ which will be rolled out in 2024. GetPaid, which enables small business to conduction transactions digitally through its e-commerce platform, according to Wilson, is “well positioned” for growth given the post-COVID accelerated adoption of digital services.
While iCreate “did not close the acquisition” of VisualVibe earlier, the CEO said it will contribute to revenues in the group’s advertising division in the upcoming year. When asked about the real estate division, he said he will comment on that at a later time.
However, he is confident that the company’s diversified revenue streams is taking the group closer to its “two-one investment strategy” goal, which he said can be achieved in the upcoming financial year.