Optimisa Buys Andrew Irving

UK agency Andrew Irving Associates (AIA) has been bought by Optimisa plc, an AIM-listed marketing services holding company which already owns business intelligence firms kae: marketing intelligence and nxtMOVE. Optimisa will pay up to £317k in total for AIA.

AIA provides qual and quant research, mostly for the UK public sector. Optimisa says the buy will give it 'a more cost-effective service capability for small projects in the UK that are currently outsourced' – plus a base for further expansion into the public sector. Optimisa says its new acquisition 'will continue to operate much as before' but should grow rapidly, with the heavily share-based sale an indicator of AIA management's commitment.

The equivalent of £187k will be paid up front, with £10,700 in cash and the issue of 17,701 shares. The remaining £130k is performance dependent. AIA's sales were just over £700k last year (ending April 2006) and profits of £47k, with a net asset value of £175k.

Optimisa CEO Simon Dannatt praised AIA's 'innovative approach', commenting: 'After our strong interim results announced last month, we continue to search for earnings-enhancing acquisitions to expand our scale and scope.' The firm acquired nxtMOVE Corporation in March this year for around £1million.

Optimisa Group, which describes itself as 'positioned in the space between the large management consultancies and the traditional market research, market intelligence and business intelligence providers', lists the activities of its two other divisions as follows:

• kae: marketing strategy development, market evaluation & forecasting, competitive intelligence & benchmarking and new proposition development
• nxtMOVE: strategic market analysis, business intelligence, acquisition search and customer due diligence.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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