Salmat sails on two years of solid growth

Marketing services company Salmat has enjoyed its fourth consecutive half of earnings growth, following the launch of its business transformation program in 2015. In the six months to December 31, 2016, Salmat's earnings before taxes and costs (EBITDA) rose by 28.8 percent on the previous six months and 45.7 percent on the previous year, to a total of $13.4 million. Craig Dower, CEO, said this continued growth was a result of its business transformation program of 'Focus, Simplify, Grow', which began two years ago. “Salmat has transformed significantly over the past two years.  The major changes are now complete: our priority is new business and revenue generation,” said Dower.

Dower said that this program has allowed Salmat to position itself to capitalise on new opportunities that may arise in the market. "The business transformation of the past two years has effectively focused our attention on areas of market leadership, simplified every aspect of our operations and built the foundations for growth," he said.

The program included investment in training and development for personnel, as well as a shift of its major IT services and infrastructure to the cloud, employing technology such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Workday and Okta. “We commenced Salmat’s transformation program in January 2015, to focus our efforts on areas of market leadership; simplify every aspect of our operations; and grow the business in a targeted and sustainable manner.

“We have undertaken a comprehensive operations restructure; implemented changes to Salmat’s product and services portfolio, which included discontinuing a number of services; and continued to consolidate multiple finance, human resources, desktop and sales management systems to new cloud-based platforms,” Dower said.

Despite a brief drop earlier in 2016 due to rationalisation, revenue increased by 4.3 percent in the second half of the year to $224.5 million. "While there is still work to be done, we are on track to achieve the sustainable and profitable growth that we are targeting," Dower said.