Permalink6 August 2009 at 09:04 by James West - Alamy CEO
Posted under News, Rambling CEO
Our latest quarterly results show that the recession has most definitely hit our revenue figures this year. Based on the current trend we anticipate that Alamy gross sales will be somewhere in the range of 15-20% down on 2008 by the year end.
The recession is affecting us in a number of areas:
- Some customers have gone out of business altogether
- Some customers have drastically cut their picture budgets (mainly evident in the UK newspaper market)
- The travel industry has been badly hit, which has a knock-on effect on the amount of brochures being produced, which in turn reduces volumes purchased from stock agencies like Alamy
- Some customers have put projects on hold in order to wait and see how the recession develops.
But there are reasons to be cheerful. Alamy is still in profit and, even taking into account our most pessimistic forecast, we will still be profitable in the event of a prolonged recession.
We are still committed to expanding our direct sales operations and we are in the process of hiring more staff for our US sales office. We also are in regular contact with our key customers and some encouraging results are coming from this. Nevertheless it is likely that we will continue to face a difficult trading environment over the next 12 months and this will be reflected in our quarterly statements for some time.
Our long term view, however, is unchanged. Alamy is in a great position as a privately held, profitable, independent company to continue to acquire market share while paying out one of the best royalty splits in the industry.
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