It seems impossible to deny that the pandemic has had a lasting impact on the social and economic lives of millions of people. Two years of Covid, political panic, economic and employment dislocation continue to cast a long shadow over industries and companies almost everywhere.
But the real surprise might just come from trade shows and exhibitions, a worldwide sector that was instantly paralysed by the 2020 lockdowns. How could the complete shutdown not cause longterm change and/or damage?
But, even after a stuttering re-start in 2022 (complicated by war and East-West geopolitics), once-beleagured trade shows have rebounded – and more quickly than ever seemed possible. And once-confident predictions that pop-up online events would permanently change the market have proved to be – well – wrong.
The power, profitability and cost-effectiveness of trade shows are being reinforced, almost daily, as organisers worldwide increasingly report financials ahead of pre-pandemic 2019. Trade association UFI says 2023 revenues will average 97% of 2019; many are much better, especially in the US and Europe.
High margins, super-positive cashflows and acquisitive private equity are back. It’s like they’ve never been gone.
It seems an appropriate time for CloserStill Media (CSM) – the UK-based trade show startup – to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, with a 68% increase in revenue, its largest acquisition and a leap up the league table of the world’s largest exhibition organisers.
The company was launched in 2008 by industry veterans Philip Soar (ex Blenheim Exhibitions) and the late Andy Center (ex Reed Exhibitions). With £700k of self-funding, they set about creating a company with a difference. Beyond the emphasis on targeting growth sectors (of course), their distinctive strategy focused on “content” and on a whole team motivated by share ownership.
In an industry whose standout cashflow and profit margins can sometimes seem to correlate with poor ‘net promoter scores’ from grudging exhibitors, CSM initially targeted the healthcare, veterinary and cloud computing sectors with content teams designed to win the support of trade association sponsors, visitors and, hence, exhibitors. High-value seminars, lectures and conferences for medical doctors, pharmacists and veterinary surgeons were sold upfront instead of in the last few months before a show. In what have become major major growth sectors, this content-rich/ CPD-angled strategy quickly won support for the new CSM shows. All these years later, the strategy translates into thousands of visitor professionals re-booking their places for the following year’s event – at the same time as exhibitors are re-booking their display space.
The London Vet Show was the first launch, in 2009, when CSM also acquired small UK Pharmacy and Dentistry Shows. The company now has more than 100 B2B exhibitions in five main groupings:
IT (28% of revenue) – The Singapore Technology Show in Singapore is CloserStill’s largest single event with an estimated revenue of £9mn. Big Data & AI World and Data Centre World, Cloud Expo Europe and Devops Live also take place in Germany, Spain, the UK, France.
Medical &Healthcare (27%) – The primary care, pharmacy, therapy and dentistry brands include the Care Show, Dentistry Show, and Pharmacy Show Show, in the UK and France.
Transport & Infrastructure (20%) – The recent, estimated £135mn acquisition of both UKI Media & Events and the associated Hydrogen Tech Expo and Carbon Capture Tech Expo includes 19 transport-tech exhibitions in the UK, US, Germany, China and South Korea, and 13 magazines.
Learning technologies (16%) – The brands include DevLearn and HR Technologies in the UK, US, France, and Germany.
Veterinary (9%) – The Vet Show takes place in the UK, US, Germany, and Singapore, a total of 13 events worldwide.
In simple terms, therefore, the CSM revenue divides 64:36 between technology and healthcare.
In the five years since Providence Equity Partners (previous owner of Clarion Events and George Little Management) became a 65% shareholder, CSM has trebled its revenue and EBITDA. In 2024 – even without additional acquisitions – it is set to exceed £200mn revenue and £60mn EBITDA.
| £mn CloserStill Media | 2024* | 2023* | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 |
| Revenue | 205.0 | 165.0 | 98.0 | 31.4 | 18.8 | 71.7 | 60.0 |
| EBITDA | 62.0 | 50.0 | 29.0 | (2.5) | (5.0) | 21.5 | 21.3 |
| Margin | 30% | 30% | 30% | — | — | 30% | 35% |
| Headcount | 600 | 500 | 277 | 305 | 297 | 222 |
The company that began in London and was still 60% domestic in 2018, has become truly international. By next year, the UK will account for just 28% of revenue, followed by Germany (25%) and US (24%), with France, Spain and Singapore each about 8%. That will, ultimately, enhance a valuation that, under successive private equity investors, has increased from £25mn in 2012 to £115mn (2015) – and £340mn when it was acquired by Providence in 2018.
One measure of CSM’s organic success is that – until the recent acquisition of UKI Media & Events and the associated Hydrogen from Tony Robinson and his family – it had funded from cashflow the £45mn spent on 12 acquisitions since 2008. Taking those c£135mn externally-funded, recent deals and Providence’s £340mn valuation in 2018, CSM can be said to have invested an estimated £475mn to produce a company that may now be worth at least £900mn (15x EBITDA). On that basis, the enterprise value has doubled in less than five years – despite two years of covid.
There are soft measures of success too.
Last year, Soar said: “We are the only significant company in the industry where the staff still own a large slice of the equity (c35%) and where the norm is to issue shares (not share options) to all staff who want them. In the whole history of the UK exhibitions industry, there have only been three occasions when a single company has won more than three awards in a single night of the UK Association of Exhibition Organisers. In each of those three cases, that company was CloserStill – including seven in a weird night in 2014, despite it being only the third year we had even entered for anything. We have won no fewer than eight “Best Trade Show” awards. Of course, the most public acclamation was being awarded the “Sunday Times Best 100 Places To Work” in three consecutive years 2018, 2019 and 2020. Before you ask, they didn’t run the award in 2021.”
It’s impossible to analyse CSM without focusing on its chair and co-founder.
With a career background that includes managing part-work/ serialised magazines (as CEO of Marshall Cavendish and Eaglemoss), owning his hometown premier league football-soccer club (Nottingham Forest) and authoring several books, Philip Soar got his taste for trade shows as CEO of the UK-listed Blenheim Exhibitions during 1989-94.
He says the sometimes volatile company (which was ultimately acquired by UBM for £600mn) had showed him how relatively straightforward it was to generate 30% profit margins by launching and acquiring exhibitions. His five years at the helm of Blenheim and his pre-CSM partnership with co-founder Andy Center, made him one of the most experienced trade show executives even before launching CSM. He’s also an endlessly articulate commentator on the industry.
It was Soar who had seemed most sceptical of digital events during the lockdown years when he and his peers had little else to do: “Digital will be a helpful adjunct in the right sectors where one can add digital content to an existing event and keep in touch with an audience for 365 days a year. That, of course, assumes that the audience is interested in a trade show organiser being in touch 365 days a year – by far the biggest question”. More recently, he asked “Is the ‘pivot to digital’ panic finally over?” and noted that the once high-flying Hoppin had lost 99% of its boom-time valuation.
But there’s much more.
Soar the polymath last year published a moving story about the life and death of his great-great-great grandfather who, in 1817, was the last person to be beheaded in England. Yes. Not just that: he was hanged, quartered (cut open) and then beheaded in front of a Derby crowd of 20,000 spectators for leading an unarmed protest on behalf of impoverished farm workers which the panicky authorities had feared could lead to a repeat of the French Revolution three decades earlier; many of his fellow workers were deported to Australia, never to return. Soar used his ancestor’s tragic story to illustrate the good or bad luck that can befall businesses as well as individuals.
Back to business and he noted that the longtime UK dominance of the international exhibitions market (the top three Informa, RX and Clarion and many others are all London-based) was a fluke. It had been fuelled by their own government’s disinterest in owning or subsidising venues (unlike many of their European counterparts). Despite this, UK exhibition companies were turbocharged by the growth of private equity cash from the US. In the 1990s, the funding propelled international expansion (including the acquisition of bargain-priced events in Europe) by the likes of Reed and Blenheim.
Soar makes the point that the lack of public involvement in exhibition venues extends to London’s almost unique distinction as a major world city in not having a conference centre that can support, say, 10,000 delegates. He broadens his criticism of UK local and national government’s laissez-faire approach to such “weapons” of soft power to include the way that some of the country’s money-spinning premier league football-soccer clubs have been acquired by high net worth individuals – and countries – from the US and Middle East. And don’t get him started on Brexit.
It’s a compelling narrative. But Soar has his sights set on global leadership of his own. We may assume that – by 2024-25 – CSM will achieve at least £250mn of revenue and £85mn EBITDA. It, presumably, means that – excluding the publicly-owned venue-organisers of Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf whose hybrid venue/events make direct comparison difficult – CSM may become the world’s fourth largest trade show organiser after Informa, RX and Clarion.
We can guess what’s next.
With a valuation of more than £1bn and earnings spread neatly between Europe and the US, CloserStill Media will be a prime candidate for IPO in London or New York in 2-3 years. That timetable could, of course, be accelerated either by a transformational deal (perhaps a merger with the similar-sized, privately-owned EasyFairs?) or irresistibly improving investment markets.
Philip Soar’s £700k, 15-year-old startup is on the runway.
