Cimpress had a strong fourth quarter to complete a strong finish to a year where the company grew revenue by 10% to reach $3.7 billion ($3.4 billion). Without the impact of acquisitions, major stakes in Mixam and CloudLab, Saxoprint, Print Alliance and Tyrol, growth would have been 4% in the year to the end of June.
The annual letter to shareholders from chairman and CEO Robert Keane, describes how Vistaprint’s product mix is evolving and how customers are changing from individuals buying a few business cards to businesses buy an ever wider range of products. Business cards represent only 22% of Vistaprint’s revenues.
At the same time packaging and labels has grown across the group to more than match business card revenue and with no sign of slowing growth. Printed promotional items are also showing strong growth trends. The investment in paper bag print and branding in Europe has been a success and will now be exported to North America.
Vistaprint remains the largest segment of Cimpress with revenue of $1.9 billion ($1.8 billion) for the year. The Upload and Print segment, comprising of DACH businesses and other print companies in Europe, including Tradeprinter, had a combined revenue of $1.27 billion for the year. The National Pen operation brought in revenue of $446.8 million.
Keane’s remarks point out that acquisitions for Upload & Print have been successful, earning back the outlay in short time. This he expects to repeat with the Saxoprint acquisition which “brings immediate capacity and will unlock synergies for other Cimpress businesses, not just Upload & Print”.
The appeal of Mixam lies with the directness of its user interface enabling specification of more complex, and thus higher margins, products.
A key to success comes from reducing the complexity of buying print. That underpins the partnership with Canva AI, which has been a success for the limited range of products offered at the first stage. That range is being extended and coverage increasing to cover a further 25 countries by the end of September.
AI is being harnessed across Cimpress: service teams are using AI to accelerate the onboarding process for new customers; the time to add new products is being cut by 75%; production efficiency is increasing and the workload has been cut by 50% for software developers at CloudLab. These, Keane says, are only emblematic of the way that AI is being used.
