Aiming High –Building pan-European Champions

Europe’s top ranking for pure-play digital signage integrator has seen a new player joining the hunt for market leader. Italian M-Cube has risen to Top 3 position by a series of acquisitions.Remaining in the #1 spot is Spain-headquartered Trison.

While heavily expanding in the past 30 months across Europe with acquisitions in France (TMM) and UK (Beaver), the latest addition to the Trison-Group was Madrid-based digital signage creative agency Necsum, now operating as TrisonNecsum. It has always been a declared goal of Trison management headed by Alberto Caceres to operate with local experts in all three Top markets (DACH, UK and France). Instead of acquiring an established German digital signage integrator, Trison decided to build a new digital signage entity in Stuttgart from scratch. Trison won in the past months two major international projects with Germany based customers in the fashion and automotive industry. Lots of work for the newly formed German entity of the integrator. The acquisitions of TMM (France) and Beaver Group (UK) very integrated into Trison operations while keeping their brand identity for the time being.   

Second largest digital signage pure player in Europe remains Zeta Display. The Malmö-based digital signage integrator continued its expansion with an additional acquisition of Gauddi (The Netherlands). With previously acquired QYN and Gauddi Zeta Display is now undisputable leader in the Nordics and the BeNeLux-Region. Zeta is the only public-traded company in-between private equity owned groups.  The new CEO – Per Mandorf – who joined Zeta in September 2019 is visibly transforming Zeta Display by reorganizing the conglomerate of companies under a newly formed group structure with a central management structure. One of the new appointments has been Laila Hede Jensen as Chief Commercial Office, who is heading all sales activities across all entities since spring 2020. Like its peers, Zeta aims for a pan-European network of companies delivering local market know-how and concept cultural background with centralized technology competence and support centers. 

New kid-on-the-block – at least in the top ranking – is M-Cube. Formerly one of Europe’s most important Scala partners. The VC-backed integrator acquired French digital signage expert Carlipa as well as Brussels-based Storever in addition to three smaller acquisitions in UK (&AlchemyDigital) and Italy (Stentle, Videomobile) forming a serious Pan-European market player. Besides acquiring five companies within 14 months M-Cube also issued successfully a 10m EUR bond shortly before the Corona crisis hit for future company shopping sprees. M-Cube now offers the largest footprint in Europe with major operations in all three main markets (DACH, UK, France) as well as Italy.  

While European players have been quite active in acquiring new digital signage players, global market leader Stratacache focused its expansion on Asia and North America. In Europe, the full-service integrator relies on a differentiated growth strategy of M&A and organic growth. While Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel established with Stratacache Capital and Managing Director a dedicated investment vehicle for M&A, the group looks for attractive larger targets which were not for sale in Europe in the past months. In times of COVID-19 pandemic this may change sooner than later. But Stratacache is determined to cover the main European markets therefore they currently serving Germany, France, Spain & Co with team from the Netherlands and UK while simultaneously building up local operations. Stratacache is most advanced in its quest to offer full end-to-end solutions and services. This explicitly includes hardware – not limited to media player but since 2020 also includes a wide range of Scala/Stratacache branded digital signage displays. In 2020 Stratacache announced a commercial cooperation with the world’s largest display panel manufacturer BoE and acquired an assembly plan on the US-Westcoast. That is an industry-first and a huge development from a former digital signage software developer (Scala) to a global market leader with own display and digital kiosk manufacturing, DooH media owner and AI-based digital retail solutions. 

Missing in the top listing is Stockholm-based Visual Art. The dominating DooH-business was acquired by Ocean Outdoor (UK). For the time being the remaining digital signage business is jointly held by Ocean Outdoor and former shareholders. It remains to be seen how long Ocean will keep their Visual Art shares once they have consolidated the newly acquired DooH media networks on its own technology platform away from Visual Art’s CMS.  

Consolidation in the industry will continue, most likely even faster than before due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The four-leading pure-player will need to decide to buy-or-build to achieve the necessary footprint in important markets. But expansion will most certainly not be limited to Europe. Trison and M-Cube operate in many international markets, but especially in China. The expansion was mainly driven by European customers also requesting their service providers to provide people on the ground. But increasingly these entities are developing to full-service center able to pitch for local customers. International reach does not mean necessarily international business – it is easy to grow with existing customers globally, but it is much more challenging to build up international business with local customers.  

Stratacache is currently best positioned to create, conceptualize, and deliver globally while Trison and M-Cube are fast catching up. Zeta Display has until now focused on winning projects with European clients but delivering globally.