Double-figure growth for DADAmobile Inc.
DADAmobile Inc., the subsidiary of DADA operating in the US market of mobile entertainment services, is weighing more and more on the consolidated turnover of DADA Group. In particular, DADAmobile Inc registered an average growth rate in turnover from month to month of about 30% during the last quarter of 2005.
Milan, January 12th 2006 - Established in January 2005 with headquarter in New York, DADAmobile Inc. is the subsidiary of DADA (MTAX: DA.MI) providing a huge selection of mobile contents to the US mobile phone users.
After entering into agreements with the most important mobile operators, among which Cingular/AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, DADAmobile Inc. started to provide its services in the US last May 2005 taking advantage of all the experience acquired by DADA in the European market.
Since then the growth of DADAmobile Inc. has been really significant: during the last quarter of 2005 the turnover deriving from DADA Group international activities actually weighed about 19% on the consolidated turnover and it is estimated that 15% of this quote is represented by the USA market only. In addition to that, with reference to the last quarter of 2005 and to the US market only, DADAmobile Inc. registered an average growth rate in turnover from month to month of about 30%.
Moreover, in December 2005 DADAmobile Inc. web site (http://us.dadamobile.com/) registered more than 4 million and 670 thousands visitors with over 13 million and 500 thousands page views (source: Nielsen Site Census) and experienced a boom in the number of subscriptions on Christmas day.
The success of DADAmobile Inc. has several reasons. As already said, the company took advantage of the experience acquired by DADA in the development and promotion in Europe of a wide range of very usable services designed for mobile phones.
DADAmobile Inc. also has a special positioning in the US “Mobile Space”: its value proposition is clear and consistent with an omnicomprehensive offer allowing each user to download any kind of content – ringtones, real tones, wallpapers, java games… within a monthly plan at Dollars 9,99 by month, just as a common “flat” rate.
In addition, DADAmobile Inc. adopted a specific media mix to promote its services in the US market, focusing more on the online promotion of its mobile services rather than on the TV ads that are so popular in Italy.
“With DADAmobile Inc. we were among the first players to enter the US market of the so-called ‘Mobile VAS’, the value added services for mobile phones, a sector which is still getting through a pioneering phase in the US” - says Paolo Barberis, Chairman of DADA. “Moreover we have to consider that mobile phones penetration is about 60% in the US so that there is still a huge space for growth, that DADA is going to exploit with the competitive advantage of its experience, built up in more than 10 years in the community and entertainment services via web and via mobile”.
Consolidated revenues for the full year of 2005 are forecast at over Euro 67 million, above the prior guidance indicated of Euro 55-60 million (the revenues of the DADA Group in 2004 amounted to Euro 48.4 million). The Group Ebitda in 2005 is forecast to be over Euro 12.7 million, equal to an Ebitda margin of approx. 19%, compared to a range of Euro 9-12 million forecast for the current year and Euro 6 million recorded in 2004.
