HH Global reaps rewards from regions

Huge growth in its Americas and Asia Pacific operations has contributed to a 37% increase in turnover and a massive 61% jump in adjusted EBITDA for UK-headquartered HH Global.

The print management and creative production company added £55m in new revenues in the year ending 31 March 2016 bringing total sales to £202m and adjusted EBITDA to £7.6m. Full results will be released at the end of the month.

Strongest results for the business came out of the Asia-Pacific region, which achieved a 72% and 86% growth in turnover and EBITDA respectively, and the Americas, which saw sales increase by 59% and EBITDA by 54%. The EMEA region grew revenues and EBITDA by 6% and 7% respectively.

“We are seeing huge growth in the US market with five or six huge contract wins in North America over the last 12 months. We have also put in better operational and financial structures,” said chief executive officer of HH Global’s creative production services, Lee Humphreys.

He added: “EMEA has been a tough market for us in the last few years but it’s great to see it growing again. It’s obviously behind the other regions but with the effects of the big contract wins – Samsung and Lloyds – it will soon show much higher percentages because those deals fall into the next financial year.”

Humphreys explained that as part of a focus on international growth, the company had invested hugely in regional teams, “instead of trying to run things from a European base,” which has resulted in some high-profile appointments.

In 2011 Mike Perez was appointed to head up the Americas, while in 2014 former Williams Lea boss Steve Nunn took the reins for the EMEA region and last year former head of Paperlinx, Andrew Price was named chief executive of HH Global’s Asia-Pacific region.

Humphreys said: “The business has really expanded and with our new regional CEOs we have a really strong regional structure in place and we all work in alignment with Robert to meet our objectives and it works. We’ve been growing internationally for 10 to 12 years and we are now really starting to see that paying dividends,”

Humphreys explained that the business, which predominantly serves the pharma and finance industries, had seen growth across the board, particularly in retail, and cited “huge” new contracts for the company’s ongoing success, including with a US home improvement retailer, Lloyds Banking Group, Samsung in EMEA, Unilever in Latin America and others in the FMCG, consumer technology, automotive and pharma industries.

As a result of the Unilever win, the company intends to move into four new countries during the next fiscal year, including Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. 

HH Global employs around 750 staff globally with around 200 in the US and the majority in the EMEA.

In the UK it has around eight client-based sites and two production sites: its headquarters in Sutton and a 650sqm design studio in Wakefield, which Humphreys said would likely be doubled or tripled over the next two years.

“Print, packaging and creative production services (CPS) are our three major service lines. Margins in CPS are more advantageous than the print management side so we’re seeing great growth there and have expanded our studios in the US, UK and Asia Pacific to meet that demand. We’ve already expanded our Wakefield and Sutton sites and we have huge growth plans ahead,” he added.

As part of a three-year growth strategy the company aims to double its turnover and triple its EBITDA by the end of the period (the figure has nearly doubled since August 2014), and Humphreys said it was an entirely attainable goal.

“We will achieve the targets by signing more deals and we have numerous in the pipeline so we are very bullish on the numbers because we know we have the successes in the bank. Deals like the ones we work on take a long time to come to fruition, so we know we have them in terms of our continual growth,” he said.

The company also attributed much of its financial success to improvements in its financial systems, reducing order-to-cash cycle times, as well as major investments in its IT infrastructure.

Humphreys said going forward the business planned to continue to invest significant amounts in infrastructure, e-commerce and finance systems.

In a statement group chief executive Robert MacMillan said: "Our clients challenge use very day to deliver cost savings, process efficiencies, and innovation as we manage their marketing execution.

"Our proprietary HHub technology, combined with the depth of experience and knowledge of our people, have allowed us to meet that challenge successfully.

"As a result, we have had several major strategic client wins and renewed all existing contracts that were due to expire this year. That combination has fueled our growth." 

He added: "As we enter our twenty-­fifth financial year, the executive board are very bullish on our growth prospects.

"We’ve seen strong demand from large, global companies that want to focus on their core business. They are assigning procurement responsibilities to specialists like us who deliver guaranteed results in the form of cost savings and faster speed to market."