Shares of gaming and forex affiliate company Catena Media plc (STO:CTM) traded down by 13% on Wednesday, after the company reported disappointing Q2 results.
Although Catena titled their results release “Another strong quarter of revenue growth and forward momentum”, and in the first line of the release touted a revenue increase of 9%, that was a comparison to last year’s Q2. What the market was clearly interested in was whether the company would be able to continue the momentum it did achieve in posting impressive results of €40.7 million in Revenue and €25.1 million in EBITDA during Q1-2021, and that just didn’t happen.
Q2 figures for Catena Media came in at Revenue of €30.4 million – down 25% QoQ from Q1 – and EBITDA of €14.9 million – down 41%.
Catena Media is an online lead generation company within iGaming and Financial Services. In 2017-2018 Catena made a concerted effort to grow from its base of gaming affiliate websites into the “financials” area, spending tens of millions of dollars in acquiring a number of (mainly) FX broker affiliate websites such as DeutscheFXBroker.de, BrokerDeal.de, ForexTraders.com, TheBull.com.au, TheBull.asia, FatCat.com.au, LearnTrading.com.au, LearnCFDs.com, hammerstonemarkets.com (since sold), and Leaprate.com. However in late 2020 Catena announced that it was making “no further investments into the Financial Services segment”, which has clearly been a disappointment for the company.
Catena Media share price graph 2021 YTD. Source: Google Finance.
The full Catena Media press release on Q2 results can be seen here.