Case Study – PXP Financial
PXP Financial (formerly Kalixa Payments Group) are a leading payments solution provider and acquirer, offering end-to-end solutions for face-to-face and remote transactions in gaming retail, travel and other market verticals.
Taking advantage of growth rates in ecommerce and other emerging payment areas, and with similar businesses already highly valued within these positive market conditions, the company owners looked to the management team to accelerate the valuation of the company and provide exceptional returns for the shareholders.
With this brief the company identified the need to define and build an insight driven transformational growth strategy for the next three-to-five years to build its value five-fold. One suitable to the opportunities and threats posed by the market, while also building on the strengths and resolving some of the weaknesses inherent within the business.
With a proven pedigree in assisting businesses grow valuations through sensible strategy development and execution, Digital Works Group were appointed to help facilitate and solve this need via our strategy team and strategy development methodology.
When Digital Works Group is approached to help an organisation develop its strategy, we are always cognizant that this should not be ‘our’ strategy, but rather it needs to be developed and owned by the management team tasked to create and execute it.
We worked in an integral and collaborative way with the PXP Financial management team to guide them using our methods and governance. We completed our core steps, providing insights and options so that informed decisions could be made, and we ensured all aspects were considered so the outcome was suitable to market and company needs, feasible to time and resources, and acceptable to stakeholders.
We combined this with our strategy development methodology, and the combined team undertook the following steps:
- An initial end-to-end program plan and governance structure was developed to ensure this complex task remained true to time and investment.
- We conducted a comprehensive review of the business and the market to create the strategic fact-base and insights so options could be identified and informed decisions could be made.
- A series of workshops were facilitated by us using our strategic choices framework, so the PXP management team members could develop the strategy. This included the development of critical success measures, the likely implementation timeline in key enablers such as organisation and technology, and the resultant investment plan.
- This was then ‘written’ into two versions – the comprehensive plan which contained all of the elements, and the benefits-led shareholder presentation delivered by the management team.
Our comprehensive strategic approach helped shape a strong improvement in the financial performance and company valuation:
- Within 5 years, revenues increased by 38%.
- EBIT, after a period of strategic investment, re-emerged into sustained profitability growth after 3 years.
- Costs, post investment, reduced as a proportion of revenue by 15%.
- The company’s valuation to grew from an estimated $100million pre-strategy, to $175million within 3 years.
