T
he company’s latest acquisition of Scandinavian
golfing software giant GolfBox A/S (GolfBox),
which was made public late last month, will allow
the Brisbane-based firm to tap into Europe’s
lucrative golf technology market, and will reinforce
MSL’s transnational presence.
The announcement was made shortly after MSL closed a
$16 million capital raise and purchased British hospitality
software provider Verteda – a hospitality platform providing
food and beverage to sport and stadia facilities, ahead of the
company’s ASX listing in the first part of 2017.
MSL provides cloud-based and on-site software solutions to
membership-based organisations through an open platform
environment, allowing it to integrate with a number of other
services. The two recent acquisitions are intended to provide
complimentary services to the firm and to leverage crossselling opportunities with their strong client bases.
acquisitions is believed to be traveling towards $35-40 million
in the 2019 financial year.
“We made a decision as a board that we were ready to go
international,” MSL Managing Director and Chief Executive
Craig Kinross said. “Culturally when you go into Europe, and
particularly the UK, their clubs operate in a similar way to
Australia and the technology requirements are very similar.”
“We’re telling a different story to a lot of other technology
companies. We’re going to the market with a track record
of profitable growth and strong investment back into our
software platform,” Kinross said ahead of next years
ASX listing.
“Both companies have a lot of synergies going forward so we can
add a lot of value to our Australian customers with the products
we now own from the European market and vice versa.”
The new venture will see GolfBox, based out of Denmark,
continue to operate under its own name as part of a larger
group, similarly to the Verteda agreement.
“This new partnership with MSL Solutions is exciting,
extremely complementary and provides us with extensive
knowledge and international growth opportunities,” GolfBox
CEO Christian Faergemann said.
“Having access to more resources only strengthens our
position and our combined services provide untold benefits
for our stakeholders. Today’s technology changes rapidly and
we are now in a prime position to adapt to future technology
trends and consumer requirements.”
GolfBox is a major suppliers of administrative software
tailored specifically to service the golf industry, with 900 plus
golf clubs and major governing bodies and federations in
Europe and Australia using their software solutions. MSL has
been reselling GolfBox’s tournament software since 2014
and Kinross said the acquisition was a natural step in moving
forward for both parties.
“GolfBox was introduced to us by Golf Australia a few years
back and we decided to integrate them into our platform.
We now have the software running tournaments for Golf
Australia, PGA Holden Scramble and Golf NSWintegrated
directly back to the Australian handicap system,” he said.
“We’ve had a really good experience working with them and
their team, and they’ve given us a lot of confidence about
what we can do with them as a company. This means we’re
able to bring the companies together in a very
complimentary way.”
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