The fintech sector has been quickly evolving over the last couple of years — particularly in the wake of COVID-19 — as innovative providers and services continue ramping up in the space.
Toronto, Ontario-based
Givex Information Technology Group Ltd. (
TSX:GIVX,
Forum is one such company making impressive strides. Having gone public in 2021 and launched in 1999, Givex has over two decades of experience providing sustainable, profitable growth.
Stockhouse Editorial recently had the opportunity to catch up with the company’s CEO, Don Gray to discuss what the company’s been up to and what investors should be watching for.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW
SH: Can we first start off with you providing just a brief overview of yourself and the company for investors who might be new to Givex?
DG: Givex is over 22 years old. I started it with my wife, Debra, in 1999 as a very simple online gift certificate website, that we started in Toronto for Toronto merchants to be able to sell gift certificates. These certificates were redeemed by consumers using a touchstone phone, that's how long ago that was. We've since grown now to well over 300 employees, after the recent acquisitions we've done. We have offices in data centers in over 10 countries. We have close to 115,000 merchant locations using the Givex services, with these new acquisitions we just picked up. We have clients, really, in a hundred countries. Our primary focus is in three areas - Customer Engagement, which is our gift and loyalty card programs - Point-of-Sale systems, which really are necessary to connect the merchant with the consumer – Payments, which is kind of a new area for Givex but rapidly growing. Those three areas are the fundamental programs that Givex offers to our merchants, as a platform where everything sits on one platform. Everything's all integrated and you've got one supplier, and one company to deal with for all these services.
SH: The company recently announced a new client, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) — what is the significance of securing a client like this, and what will it mean for the company going forward?
DG: Well Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment obviously is a great brand. Everybody knows the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays and all the companies, all the teams that are associated. We have also already started working with a lot of Major League Baseball teams, NBA teams and NFL teams in the United States and in Canada. We have over 30 teams using our Uptix program. This is a nice brand to get because it's right in our backyard, but it's not new to us to be able to deal with teams of this size, and companies and operations of this size. We look forward to, not only, selling them our existing gift card programs but also to expand on that, to sell them more of our services as time goes on but of course that all remains to be seen.
SH: The company has also made other key acquisitions in Kalex and Loyalty Lane — what was it about these two companies that stood out to Givex?
DG: Well, Kalex is a company that's been around for over 15 years and their primary function is installations. They have a lot of brand name clients in Canada such as Pizza Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken, where they've done all the installs and with the technology for these companies on contract with, not only the companies, but also with the major suppliers that look after and provide them with their technology services. We were really looking to Kalex more as a company to help us roll out our existing clients as we bring in new customers and sign-up new customers. We want to be able to look after close to a thousand, as we have to do right now, so we want to be able to make sure that we have a good team that is able to help us make that happen.
We've been able to do it on our own up until now, but Kalex will give us that expertise and the knowledge base that we need to actually make that even more effective now. Plus, with those brands, we hope to be able to sell those brands some of our additional services - not POS systems because they're well established with those already - but we can sell them gift card programs and loyalty programs, online ordering systems, which we can sell them. We’re looking forward to doing that - as a matter of fact, Pizza Pizza, which is one of those brands, is already a client of Givex, using our engagement platform.
Loyalty Lane is a company with very interesting technology in the grocery space. They do specialized coupons, where they will connect the major brand, for example, maybe it's a Downy fabric softener, with a consumer who wants to use a coupon that Downy has made available and all this has to happen in at real time at the POS system. Loyalty Lane has built the system to be able to make all that happen at the POS system, and they've also got the technology to have the web apps, the telephone apps, mobile apps, etc., to connect it all together, to make a very seamless process. Which today you'll see a lot more groceries going towards virtual checkouts and things like this. So, this will give us the opportunity now, to start expanding into that area more.
SH: Givex has also recently announced that another client, iFood – a leader in online food delivery in Latin America, has expanded their services to Colombia — what does this expansion mean to Givex and investors?
DG: iFood is now turning out to be one of Givex’s largest clients. We do some very interesting work with iFood. We are their stored value program for iFood in Brazil, which has like 175,000 users on their platform. They do millions and millions of transactions per day and have drivers all over the country and over a thousand cities. They're expanding that business into Colombia and hope to expand that business into other countries in Latin America, and we're going to be their partner as we do that. This is just a natural expansion for us, because we're going to be working with iFood throughout Latin America as they grow their business - and it would become very lucrative for us because it's a very interesting program we've got there, where we actually are the store value technology that sits on their card. Which is really almost a little bank account that they can use to buy products other than iFood, they can buy groceries, pharmacy, everything with that particular card. It’s a very exciting area for Givex and we look forward to expanding that even more in the year coming up.
SH: Are there any other catalysts coming up that our investor audience should be looking out for?
DG: In our offering memorandum, we did talk about continuing to do acquisitions, so Givex is going to continue to work on that program. We're also looking at hopefully soon being able to announce that we're going to be trading on the OTC. These are things that we did talk about before, we're just working our plan and so we expect those will be catalyst as we grow in the coming year but really, we're just sticking with our plan what we are already disclosed - I really can’t talk about all the other great things that are happening until I have a press release talk about it. These are the things that I know we've already talked about before, and I'm just kind of reemphasizing for your audience today.
SH: Is there anything else you’d like to discuss that I might have missed?
DG: Well, not really. I think the companies doing well, we're excited about our future. I just noticed today that the Canadian government has announced a program to help Ukrainian refugees that are coming to Canada, that can come to Canada, looking for jobs. We would welcome them with open arms at Givex, as we have a lot of new Canadians working for our company. We'd be more than happy to work with the government and whoever else we have to, to help employ Ukrainians that are coming to Canada, looking to get away from that horrible event that's going on over there right now.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing