Not sure what's going on here.
They acquired Phoenix, effectively, on 2 Feb 2016. Which means that they had zero contribution from Phoenix in DH15, the comparison period, and full contribution from Phoenix in DH16;
Phoenix was generating annualised Revenues of $40m pa, so all things being equal, DWS's DH2016 Revenue should have been circa $20m higher than pcp. Yet it came in just $5.6m higher.
Looking at sequential periods, i.e., DH2016 vs JH2016, they effectively took control of Phoenix on 2 December, so they had only 5 months contribution from Phoenix in JH2016, and yet DH2016 Revenues and EBITDA still went backwards on JH2016. (Revenues: JH2016 = $76.3m; DH2016 = $73.7m and EBITDA: JH2016 = $14.2m; DH2016 = $13.2). And it isn't a seasonal thing, DWS's Revenues and earnings don't display much first-half/second-half seasonality.
Looks like the core business continues to go backwards at quite a clip as it started doing between 2012 to 2015, before the $35m of acquisitions was undertaken over the course of late 2015 and during 2016, to help stem the tide.
If you strip out the acquisitions, there are some disturbing underlying trends in this business, I think.
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