10
Affiliate Monitor Giants comparison
Giants comparison
● In the ring ● Growing by acquisition ● What to show for it ? ● Divergent paths
● Better Collective Q2 review ● Catena Media Q2 review
PART TWO
IN THE RING
Quarterly earnings statements are perhaps a crude measure of the health of a company in comparison with its peer group . But when it comes to the twin giants of the listed gaming affiliate sector , Better Collective and Catena Media , it provides some interesting clues and perspectives about where the leaders in the space stand , particularly in relation to each other .
The Copenhagen-based Better Collective is the older of the two companies having been founded back in 2002 by Jesper Søgaard and Christian Kirk Rasmussen , both of whom remain with the company as CEO and COO respectively . It floated in 2018 on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange after having generated revenues for 2017 of € 26m .
Catena Media is the younger of the pair having been founded in 2012 by Emil Thidell , who served as CTO until early 2016 , and Erik Bergman , who served as CEO from 2010-2015 and chief strategy officer thereafter , before leaving the business at the end of 2017 .
The company floated on the Nasdaq in September 2017 under then-CEO Robert Andersson , who is now in charge at Acroud , having previously been listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier market since early 2016 .
GROWING BY ACQUISITION
From its humble beginnings , Catena quickly took to the M & A trail , completing over 30 deals in the mid-years of the last decade . By the time of the second quarter of 2020 , revenues had grown to € 27.8m from less than € 2m in Q1 of 2015 .
In comparison , Better Collective initially took a steadier approach , more clearly using M & A to bolster its organic growth . Quarterly revenues in its first quarter as a listed entity came in at € 9.7m and had more than doubled by the first quarter of 2020 to € 20.9m .
From this point , though , as shown in Chart 1 , the rivals at the top of the market have seen their quarterly revenue performances diverge as their differing business strategies became evident .
Adding significant merger deals to its revenues over the last nine quarters , Better Collective briefly took the title of the largest affiliate by quarterly revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020 , before being slightly overtaken in Q121 and then subsequently pulling ahead with a succession of ever larger deals . iGB Affiliate Monitor