Commify and Brexit
07 Feb 19 | read time 2 mins
Commify is one of Europe’s largest Application To Person messaging providers, serving over 30,000 businesses across multiple countries and brands. With revenues approaching €100m per annum and owned by Hg Capital, Europe’s largest technology investor, it is financially robust and continues to grow strongly, both organically and through acquisition.
While headquartered in the UK, Commify is a truly European business, with 250 staff across the continent and Australia. The company does not ‘export’ its services to Europe and is therefore better placed than many British-based businesses to face any possible challenges posed by Brexit. In most of its markets Commify operates through a domestic legal entity, employs local staff, sends messages through the country’s mobile network operators and serves businesses domiciled in the territory. So for our French, Spanish, Italian and German businesses, we do not see Brexit posing a significant threat.
The UK is responsible for a sizeable proportion of Commify’s total revenue, with Esendex, Text Marketer and FastSMS all strong brands in this fast-growing market. Clearly any UK macro-economic downturn is likely to affect many of our UK customers and therefore has the potential to affect Commify’s UK sales. But with over 10,000 UK businesses of all sizes, across all industry verticals using our services, typically for mission-critical messaging, this risk is not concentrated in a particular segment and we see the impact being relatively low.
And of course, with the bulk of our revenue coming from outside the UK, this should not pose a significant financial threat to Commify’s overall business viability and thus all our customers, including those in the UK, should be confident in our ongoing operations.
Commify does rely on the free movement of labour, capital and data across the continent and so it is possible that in the medium term, once any Brexit transition period has completed and new and/or divergent laws governing these practices come into place, the operating environment may be slightly more complex, due to increased regulation and administration. But Commify has operated successfully across the continent for almost two decades and is well used to complying with local legislation.
We will continue to monitor the situation closely and update our customers should this outlook change.
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