DotDigital gobbles up Comapi in £11m deal

Digital marketing software-as-a-service and managed services provider dotDigital Group has completed the acquisition of the Comapi group of companies for a cash consideration of £11m, it announced on Wednesday.

The AIM-traded firm said potential further consideration of up to £1.2m in share options was also payable to the management team, dependant on them achieving specific performance targets over a two-year post-acquisition period and remaining with the business.

Headquartered in Cheltenham with approximately 30 employees, dotDigital said Comapi has built a scalable software platform that allows businesses to communicate with their consumers across multiple conversational messaging channels, including the growing market for live chat.

Comapi's investment in technology allows it to compete in the CPaaS (communication platform as a service) and ARN (alerts, reminders and notification) markets, which dotDigital said provided a flexible API (application programming interface) based omni-channel messaging platform and toolkit that facilitates “easy integration” and “rapid deployment” to businesses requiring a personalised and two-way customer engagement solution.

Comapi had revenues of £7.8m - which are primarily recurring - and EBITDA of £1.2m for the year to December 2016.

Revenues for Comapi in the current financial year were said to be growing at approximately 15% based on their software-as-a-service business model.

The dotDigital board said it expected there to be opportunities to further expand revenues once the integrations have been completed.

Comapi has just completed a £2.7m research and development programme, and on completion of the transaction would have a positive net asset position.

The two subsidiaries combined were currently cash break even after spending roughly £1.0m on research and development in the current year.

“By adding Comapi to our business, dotdigital is executing on its vision to be an omni-channel marketing automation platform,” said dotDigital chief executive Milan Patel.

“Comapi has built an impressive platform that, integrated with our software, will allow our customers access to the next generation of consumer engagement marketing technology aiding retention and boosting our competitive advantage in securing new customers.

Patel said that in particular, that would support dotDigital’s goal to grow both average revenue per user and recurring revenues.

“We are pleased to welcome the Comapi team and look forward to supporting their business plan and introducing their technology to our global customers.”