Mobile marketing and entertainment software provider InternetQ rose almost 10% this morning after issuing an upbeat FY13 year end update.
Revenues for the year to 31 December, are expected to be up 'nearly 40% to over €100m'. Margins also improved in the second half (see InternetQ: still early days for Minimob), helping InternetQ achieve adjusted EBITDA more or less flat on the previous year at c16%. Most impressive was the cash generated from operations, which reached €12m up from €1.5m last time.
Another strong plus is that most of InternetQ’s revenue growth is organic. Last July’s acquisition of Atlas Interactive in Germany (now InternetQ GmbH) (see here) is unlikely to have contributed more than €10m during the period (it made €23.5m revenue in FY12). However we hope to have more visibility on this in the full year results in April.
It is in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where InternetQ is seeing most growth. Here the company sees mobile marketing and mobile entertainment services being used by mobile operators as a ‘powerful customer acquisition tool. InternetQ has a range of products to help mobile operators in this area, from its core MobiDialog platform that manages marketing campaigns with predictive analytics, to its music streaming platform Akazoo, to Minimob, that aims to help developers cross-promote and monetize their apps.
Earlier this month, InternetQ acquired Interacel Holdings LLC, apparently one of Latin America's fastest growing mobile service providers – giving another clear indication where the focus of grow is likely to be in 2014. The challenge will be achieving this expansion and investment while maintaining a tight grip on the bottom line.