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02 Mar 2020
Gamma : Acquisition of Exactive - Buy

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Gamma : Acquisition of Exactive - Buy
Gamma Communications PLC (GAMA:LON) | 1,105 0 0.0% | Mkt Cap: 1,018m
- Published:
02 Mar 2020 -
Author:
Julian Yates | Roger Phillips -
Pages:
6 -
Exactive sells a managed services wrap to large enterprise customers that want to use the Microsoft Teams product, with particular accreditations in voice. Teams is often used as an internal collaboration product, but Exactive’s own-IP helps integrate Teams with a SIP trunk, transforming Teams more towards being a full cloud PBX / unified comms platform. Critically, Exactive does not resell Teams licences at scale and is not a “reseller” in any sense; rather, it is a managed services player incorporating proprietary IP.
Strategically, we see Exactive as complementary to Gamma’s existing Horizon cloud PBX in being targeted at a different market segment. Horizon is UK number one in the SMB segment (sub-500 seats) whereas Exactive / Teams is more of a sell to large enterprise who would tend to buy Microsoft anyway. As a result, we see Gamma as now addressing the full spectrum of unified communications, in terms of market segments, in the UK.
Exactive is accretive but not material to the P&L as it stands (c.1% revenue, <1% EBITDA pro forma), but we would draw comparison to the Varidion business bought in 2012, which now forms a material part of the Direct business (>£80m revenue 2019) and was a broadly similar size when bought. We plan to update forecasts more generally at FY results in two weeks and so will fold in changes for Exactive then, along with general trading, and possibly also VozTelecom in Spain. Folding all changes in together likely suggests upside of 5%-8% to FY20E EBITDA / EPS forecasts. The price looks keen as usual at 1.2x trailing sales on initial consideration and 2x trailing revs on full consideration (assuming the business more than trebles EBITDA FY19-FY21E, to £1.5m, implying a 5x stretch EBITDA multiple).
We retain our Buy and TP; following Friday’s indiscriminate sell-off, the stock looks better value, and is even more of a core holding in a scenario where remote / distributed working and communications become more prevalent.