ALSO eyes more acquisitions after breaking €10bn revenues

Pan-European distributor ALSO is eyeing up more acquisitions after closing out a year of double digit revenue and profits growth.

For full-year 2019, EBITDA rocketed by 29 per cent to €197m on revenues that jumped by 16.5 per cent to €10.7bn.

ALSO claims that more than half (52 per cent) of its revenue growth came organically.

By business segment, its traditional "Supply" product business increased sales by 16.4 per cent. Its "Solutions" arm grew sales by 16 per cent while "Services" saw a 21 per cent spike in revenues. Cloud-based revenues swelled by 58 per cent, claims ALSO.

"It is remarkable that we were able to reach this result while at the same time transforming the organization as well as the net working capital," said CEO Gustavo Möller-Hergt in a statement.

The stellar results follow a busy few years of M&A for ALSO. The distributor has been rapidly expanding its footprint, especially in eastern Europe, through acquiring leading players in Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

The Swiss distributor closed its largest-ever acquisition last summer in €1bn-revenue Polish player ABC Data, which grew ALSO's presence across six CEE countries.

ALSO landed in Poland in 2015 when it acquired €400m-turnover PC Factory. At the beginning of this year, ALSO announced it had merged its Polish operations together into a single entity simply called ALSO Polska.

In its 2019 earnings statement, ALSO said that the ABC Data acquisition has already started to contribute to earnings thanks to a speedy integration process.

Its strategic targets for the next few years include fully integrating its eastern European acquisitions, growing its Solutions and Services business models, expanding its market share in countries in which it doesn't have a dominant position and making additional acquisitions to grow its geographic or product footprint.

The distributor secured a €300m credit facility in November which Möller-Hergt said would be put towards more M&A. The firm has previously stated that it aspires to hold a number one or number two position in all of the markets in which it operates.

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