Alviva Holdings is entering into new market areas with its acquisitions, and is particularly excited about the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) developer Merlynn Intelligence Technologies.
The group is also planning to rapidly increase its broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) holdings in the coming months.
This is the word from Alviva CEO Pierre Spies, presenting the group’s interim results for the six months to 31 December 2018.
For the half-year 2019, Alviva reported revenue of R7,7-billion, up 20% on the comparable period last year, with EBIDTA up 14% at R460-million. This resulted in headline earnings per share (HPES) of 146,2 cents (up 10%) and earnings per share (EPS) of 172,4 cents (up 21%).
The group has invested R391-million in growth assets; and a share buyback and dividend of R76-million.
On the distribution side, the group plans to be the cloud and enterprise distributor of choice, Spies adds.
Among the enterprise brands it distributes are AxizCloud, Cisco, Citrix, Check Point, Dell EMC, HPE, Huawei, IBM, McAfee, MicroFocus, Microsoft, Nutanix, Oracle, Palo Alto, Red Hat, Symantec, Trend Micro, Veeam, Veritas and VMware.
“We are an aggregator of services, so resellers will be able to buy just about any cloud solution from AxizCloud.”
Datacentrix has launched its own cloud as well, which will offer cloud services to end user customers.
Looking to future revenue growth, Alviva has acquired 65% of Merlynn Intelligence Technologies, which clones specific human expertise.
The company has several large banking and insurance clients, and Spies says it has captured the attention of some of the largest global companies in the sector.
The company’s Tacit Object Modeller (Tom) is a highly differentiated with almost limitless application and market development.
Spies says Alviva believes AI is the future, and this technology lends itself to scaling through the reseller network with value delivered within days, and offers annuity revenue in the form of enterprise licensing and transactional revenue.
The company focuses on the financial, insurance and security intelligence sectors.
Financial customers include Absa, FNB, SunCorp Bank and other international banks.
In the security and intelligence sector, Merlynn is exploring opportunities in the US government.
Customers in the insurance and industrial sectors include SunCorp, Sasol and Santam.
Spies points out the group is committed to growing and reinventing the business through both organic growth and acquisition, and will continue to pursue a focused acquisition strategy.
In terms of B-BBEE, Alviva is currently at 26%. It aims for a short-term objective over the next few months of 31% and a long-term goal within the next few years of 51% though the group.