- COMPANY RESULTS
Raketech has announced it recorded an increase in Q1 revenue of 20.1% year-on-year, despite what it calls “unexpected challenges” in relation to its affiliate marketing.
Revenue for Q1 totalled €19.0m (£16.31m/$20.62m) for the first three months of the year, while EBITDA adjusted for restructuring costs came in at €5.1m, which marked a 16.3% drop from Q1 2023.
Raketech explained the disparity in results through the weaker performance in Sweden as well as the “soft performance” of the Casumba assets following the latest Google Core Update in March.
Operating profit, adjusted for costs related to restructuring, was also down from €3.8 to €2m, representing a 46.8% drop. However, free cash flow before earnouts increased by 16% year-on-year to €6.5m due to a positive working capital development from trade receivables according to Raketech.
Affiliate hiccups
For affiliation metrics, Raketech was able to increase its new depositing customers (NDCs) year-on-year by 8.8% up to 59,657. But revenue for affiliation was down by 18.5% from 2023 to €8.77m.
This the affiliate placed the blame for at the hands of Google’s latest core update and the affiliate admitted that the completion of the update in April prompted a revision of its full-year targets. Raketech worked with Casumba’s founders to implement SEO recovery strategies as well as improve content quality to offset the update’s impact.
Sub-affiliation however did not suffer the same issues as it increased its revenue by 149.8% from €3.59m up to €8.97m year-on-year. This part of the business includes Raketech Network and AffiliationCloud and Raketech noted that it is enhancing its platform capabilities to improve partner performance and satisfaction, expand to new markets and onboard new publishers.
While there was mostly growth across the regions Raketech operates in, including a 42% revenue rise in the Nordics, US revenue was down. Revenue in the region decreased by 8.1% due to the high season for sports in the US being over, yet Raketech highlighted that it remains committed to a subscription-based digital platform for its US activities.
Remain confident
We remain confident in our market-leading product offerings and see promising growth opportunities through our strategic initiatives in sports offerings, exclusive partnerships, and media deals,” said Johan Svensson, acting Raketech CEO.
“These efforts will position us well for continued growth in the coming years, and we remain committed to maximising shareholder value.”
Svensson, one of Raketech’s founders, was CEO until 2017 before becoming CCO to 2019. He resumed CEO duties this year after Oskar Mühlbach stepped down in January.
The company said that Mühlbach left over a difference in views on the strategic direction of the group.