Affiliate giant XLMedia has forecast a year-on-year rise in revenue and adjusted earnings for the first half of its 2021 financial year, due to the performance of its personal finance and European sport sector and the impact of its recent US-facing acquisitions.
Revenue for the six months to June 30 is set to amount to $32.0m (£23.3m/€27.2m), which would be 15.5% higher than $27.7m in the same period last year.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) is expected to decline 17.1% from $3.5m to $2.9mm but adjusted EBITDA is forecast to increase 37.3% from $5.1m to $7.0m.
As such, XLMedia said its full-year revenue guidance of between $65.0m and $70.0m stated on 27 May remains unchanged.
Going into detail on the first-half performance, XLMedia noted a “consistent performance” within its personal finance vertical, as well as record organic growth in the European sport sector.
XLMedia also referenced a positive impact from its recently acquired US assets. In March, XLMedia acquired US-focused sportsbook review website Sports Betting Dime, while it also purchased sports gaming and sports betting business CBWG Sports in December last year.
Alongside its financial update, the affiliate giant also published and operational update, in which it said the integration and commencement of a number of marketing initiatives across its US sports assets continues to gather momentum, helping boost traffic levels on all sites since their acquisition.
XLMedia said management also continues to accelerate efforts to reorganise the business, supported by a distributed shared services model.
This, XLMedia said, will allow it to better match the design of the group with strategic intentions and more effectively execute and deliver them.
However, the group said that this initiative will likely lead to a 15% drop in total workforce.
“Functional expertise will now be spread across multiple locations and organised in a way that, as the group builds new capabilities and enters new markets, the business will have an agile service delivery model that can provide timely and localised support while simultaneously controlling costs,” XLMedia said.
“The group continues to actively evaluate acquisition opportunities that would accelerate the company’s growth ambitions and be earnings accretive to the business.”
