Communisis hits acquisition trail again

Communisis has bought The Communications Agency (TCA), a London-based multi-channel agency, for £7.3m.

“We’re creating an integrated agency as part of our Produce division and have been looking for acquisitions to fill in the gaps,” said Communisis chief executive Andy Blundell.

“We’re very pleased to have bought TCA. It has great people, scale and strong leadership.”

Blundell added that while Communisis would continuing to look out for acquisition targets, the firm was "extremely selective". He also said that the firm was working to integrate the recent acquisitions and expected to have completed the process by the end of this year.

The agency’s 42 staff, including chairman Robert Prevezer and chief executive Adam Leigh, have all transferred to Communisis.

For its financial year ending 31 October 2013, TCA reported an adjusted EBITDA of £450,000 on a turnover of £6.2m.

TCA’s clients include American Express, Argos, British Airways, The Economist and Fiat.

While the value of the deal is more than 16 times EBITDA, according to Andrew Bain, analyst at Cenkos Securities, Communisis expects TCA to double its projected earnings over the next two to three years.

"We believe that around half TCA revenues are with clients in the financial sector with limited overlap of the existing Communisis client base; given Communisis’ strength in this sector we believe that there should be substantial cross-selling opportunities," he added.

Communisis share price was up 1.25p to 59.5p at the time of writing.

The firm is the latest in a line of agencies bought to build Communisis’ Produce division.

Earlier this year, in April, it acquired video production firm Jacaranda and digital agency Public Creative, while last September it bought content marketing specialist Editions Publishing.

TCA is the largest of its recent agency acquisitions, second only to its 2008 purchase of Absolute Intrinsic for £12.6m to create Communisis Data back in 2008.