Givex Information Technology is a cloud-based, omnichannel technology platform that integrates products, such as gift cards, loyalty programs, and point-of-sale systems, to enterprise-level retail and hospitality merchants.
Today I am joined by the company’s CEO, Don Gray.
Thank you so much for meeting with me to give us some more information on your new partnerships and acquisitions.
TMH: When we last spoke on The Power Play, you had just launched the first pharmacy omnichannel gift card with Pague Menos, how has this launch been so far?
DG: It’s a big launch, so we’re well on our way to doing that. We have a lot of installation and setup work to do with our team, but it’s all progressing very well, and we’re excited to see some revenue from this particular client in our fourth quarter. Usually, it takes some time with these large clients to get them going, but we’re very happy with the progress so far, and we look forward to a long and lasting relationship with Pague Manos and some of the exciting other things that we’re going to be doing with that pharmacy chain.
TMH: You added 1100 locations to your base with that launch, and I know you spoke of your overall goal being to increase the number of locations that you have, so has this been a success over the past few months?
DG: Since we’ve started the year since we’ve been public, we’ve added well over 15,000 locations to our network, which is approximately 15% of our overall network before we started. So, yes, we’re very happy with how we’re doing there. 1100 from Pague Manos is obviously a nice add-on, but then we also have added a lot of locations through our acquisition of Kalex. Kalex is more of an installation and maintenance company, so they have a lot of clients, but they’re not really on the Givex platform. The objective now is to move as many of those clients as we can to use our Givex platform. To give you an example, Kalex has a large client that they’ve had for many years, which operates franchises for US-based clients, US-based franchise ORs, and we have an opportunity now to pitch our full-on services to one of their established clients, which is one of the reasons we made that acquisition. We’re very excited about the opportunity to not only do the installation for these clients but also to be able to sell them or add on services and get them onto the Givex full platform.
TMH: Back in August, you completed the acquisition of Counter Solutions which is a company that really aligns with the technology and work that Givex does, can you update us on this relationship and how have things gone since the acquisition?
DG: It’s brand new. We just closed the deal in the middle of August – It’s just starting in October, so it’s only about six weeks old, but they’ve been a very good group to work with. We’ve been able to get them working with our tools very quickly. We’re moving them onto our ERP program very quickly so that we can get everybody unified into the same operating environment. One of the big advantages to Counter Solutions is they have some very large brand-name clients in the UK, and we’re very excited about closing one of those large deals in the next quarter, which we’ve been working on for quite a while. We’re looking forward to that happening and seeing Counter Solutions added to the Givex platform as well, where we can add their functionality to the Givex functionality. Then our functionality is some of the things that they do around kiosks and hands-free operations in cafes and employee launches.
TMH: And as that last announcement was the 4th acquisition in the past 18 months for Givex, do you have any more exciting news lined up?
DG: With the economy potentially sliding into recession and with things a bit rocky out there at the moment as far as the stock market’s concerned etc – we are just going to be a little more conservative than we probably have been in the last nine months, but we’re still going to be keeping our eye open for good acquisition opportunities. I don’t expect that we’ll be doing any of these, probably until the first quarter of next year. We don’t expect to do anything, and it’s already getting close to the end of the year, and most people don’t want to do any transactions of this nature close to the end of the year anyway. We’ll be looking at the first quarter of next year to kind of look at what our next opportunity may be there. In the interim, we’ll focus very hard on the deals we’ve already made this year to make sure that they’re well looked after, and we get the teams to totally amalgamated into the Givex system.
TMH: Before we finish off, is there anything else you would like investors to know about Givex and your growing future?
DG: Givex has been focused and continues to focus on growing our business organically, as well as through acquisitions, and making sure we keep an eye on our profits and our cash, and we’re going to continue to do that. Hopefully, our investors appreciate the fact that we’ve got a reasonably conservative view toward growth, but we still want to grow at a nice rate. Hopefully, our investors can like the story, and we can attract more people to buy our stock.
Thank you so much for joining us today, we look forward to hearing more about your progress in the future.
We’ve been speaking with Don Gray, the CEO of Givex Information Technology. Givex is trading on the TSX under the symbol GIVX. You can also visit them at givex.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by The Market Herald.
