Climb Global Solutions will continue to make one to two acquisitions a year, with the focus now moving to western Europe, its CEO has told IT Channel Oxygen.
The NASDAQ-listed outfit today announced it has rebadged recent Anglo-Irish acquisition DataSolutions under its distribution brand, Climb Channel Solutions.
But talking to IT Channel Oxygen, CEO Dale Foster said Climb is determined to continue leading consolidation of the western European distribution space (its UK or UK-centric acquisitions so far comprise Sigma [2020], Spinnakar [2022] and DataSolutions [2023]).
“We decided that this is where the consolidation is going to happen,” Foster (pictured above, centre, with Brian Davis and Roberta McCrossan) said.
“It’s [already] happened in North America. So that’s why our acquisition targets are squarely faced in western Europe, and will continue to be for the next couple of years.”
A new Microsoft ERP system that went live in North America in July, and has just been rolled to the UK, will enable Climb to acquire targets “much quicker”, Foster predicted.
Time to crack DACH
Focused on vendors positioned in the ‘Challenger’ section of Gartner Magic Quadrants, NASDAQ-listed Climb predicts that calendar 2024 gross billings will advance 12-15% on the $1.2bn registered last year.
Some 15% and 20% of its business currently comes from Western Europe, Foster indicated.
Climb last month acquired US Adobe distributor Douglas Stewart Software & Services.
But Foster stressed that this deal only occurred because it had taken two years to get over the line, and is not necessarily indicative of the wider M&A strategy.
“That one was a timing issue with the company,” he said.
“We’ve talked about [working with] emerging vendors, and then we go and sign someone like Adobe!”
“With that said, my sights are fully on the western European market. Yes, I’m starting calls with companies in Australia and the Middle East, but the lion’s share of my targets are in western Europe – specifically DACH. Our goal is to acquire one to two distributors a year.”
Climb also has targets in Poland and the Nordics, Foster added.
Foster’s good calls
Westcoast’s acquisition by ALSO doesn’t have a big impact on Climb because 90% of its business is from software, said Foster, who held up TD Synnex, Ingram, Arrow, Exclusive and Infinigate as his core competitors.
Asked which emerging vendors it is betting on, Foster picked out secure data sharing specialist Kiteworks, cloud storage ace Wasabi and data platform outfit Vast Data as among those generating the highest growth.
“We launched Kiteworks in North America and have already signed them in all of Western Europe. We are just growing and growing with them,” he said.
“Our relationship with Wasabi has doubled down as it’s put more datacenters in London, France and the Netherlands. A lot of companies want to keep their data in-country, so wherever they’ve put a datacentre that’s just accelerated our growth.
“And we just expect to really expand what we’re doing with Vast Data.”
Foster added: “We talk about being a route to market for emerging vendors, and if you look at the companies we’ve acquired, they have the same DNA. The technology starts in North America – they get profitable there and then they expand.
“We think we can expand more quickly as we grow than our competitors. It’s just a faster route to market for emerging vendors. We can get them to proof of concept in North America and then launch into our teams within weeks, instead of 18 months as some of our competitors do.”
The focus now is to continue growing, while further limiting the line card (Climb has pared down its vendors from 455 to 100 in recent years).
The impending rollout of the ERP system to Ireland meant it was the right time to rebrand DataSolutions, the Dublin-headquartered Citrix distributor it acquired for €15m last October, Foster said.
“This means we’ll all be on the same system, speaking the same back-office language. We really just need to come out as Climb as we continue to acquire and build that brand name,” he concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
