Straker Acquires Madrid-based COM Translations

For its first acquisition post-IPO, New Zealand’s Straker Translations chose COM Translations, a media and audio-visual translations company (i.e., transcription, subtitling, voice-over translation) based in Madrid with an office in Los Angeles.

The all-cash purchase was completed on February 22, 2019 in Spain and cost Straker NZD 0.74m (USD 0.51m), including earn-out based on agreed performance targets over the next two years. The deal was funded from cash reserves; no capital needed to be raised to complete the transaction. COM Founder Carlos Garcia will join Straker in a business development capacity.

Prior to its October 22, 2018 listing on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), Straker had acquired Barcelona-based Management System Solutions on June 1, 2018, and Germany’s Eule Lokalisierung on July 1, 2018.

This latest bolt-on allows Straker to combine production centers in Spain and, potentially, “grow revenues with COM’s global blue-chip content and media companies,” the ASX announcement said. COM has a team of 20 employees in Madrid.

The purchase of COM “supports our immediate expansion into media and audio-visual translation capabilities,” the same announcement quoted CEO Grant Straker as saying.

The same document stated that COM’s revenues over the last three years ranged from NZD 1.4–1.8m (or about USD 1m) per annum — a couple million afield of Straker’s “focus […] on templating the acquisition and integration of USD 3–5m revenue companies,” as previously highlighted.

The ASX filing said COM “translates media assets into over 50 language pairs and has translated over 1,400 movies, 7,400 episodes and 800,000 subtitle minutes”; and that Straker expects this latest acquisition to be EPS accretive from its first full financial year in FY 2020.

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