Milan, 27 September 2019. DHH now unites 10 different businesses, almost 80 people and serves around 100,000 customers in Southeast Europe. Thanks to the unique ecosystem created by DHH, our teams enjoy a multitude of benefits that have their roots in values adopted by the group – open-mindedness, respect, and clear communication.
Giandomenico Sica told us a bit more about what unites different businesses within DHH in this interview. He also shared the results of the companies so far in 2019 and told us a bit about interesting plans for the rest of the year.
How is 2019 been treating DHH so far? Can you consider this a successful time for DHH?
Giandomenico Sica: “The first semester of 2019 was in line with our historical trends – we grew by a double-digit figure. Some companies did great this semester, for example, in Slovenia, we grew by 16%. In Italy, we’ve faced some obstacles in the first quarter of 2019, but we were able to reverse this trend in the second quarter, so the things now are going well.
In general, we are pretty happy with how the first semester of 2019 went, even though we did not have any acquisition.
DHH is all about growing organically on one side and growing via acquisitions on the other, through adding new companies to our group. At the moment, we are working hard to find new prospective companies and look for new opportunities on the market. Currently, apart from smaller consolidation deals in the countries where we are present, we are targeting companies bigger than the ones we acquired in the past.”
Were there any significant events (product releases, upgrades, acquisitions) that helped push DHH growth higher in 2019?
Giandomenico Sica: “I would say the biggest contributor to our growth this year is the Slovenian company. The major driver of DHH group’s growth are the marketing activities carried out by our companies – some of the firms adopted new pricing and marketing strategies this year.
I’d also like to highlight our organic growth trend in Croatia, where we were able to observe nice results. In Switzerland, we also had a good result this semester, thanks to the inflow of premium clients from our Italian company.
In Serbia, our results were mainly driven by mCloud, which is the acquisition that we made last year.”
What are the values that help DHH grow as a group?
Giandomenico Sica: “In DHH, we have people coming from different cultures and countries, so I’d say the very first value that helps us grow is mutual respect. We respect each other’s cultures and ways of working. When working in such environment, it is very important to manage communications very carefully.
Moreover, in DHH, we face another challenge – we work remotely from different locations and sometimes, it might be hard to get a clear picture of the whole situation from another perspective. So, another thing that is valued in DHH is clear communication. It is vital to be proactive in communication – we try to answer our emails and take care of the request the other party made as soon as possible.
Yet another must-have value in DHH is open-mindedness. We always try to be understanding, tolerant and we always encourage our people to have an open mind when it comes to work – trying to actually see things from a different perspective is very important.
At DHH, we are now around 80 people, and I think we are using our differences to our advantage.”
Each company under the DHH wing is unique and its value propositions vary a lot. What unites them aside from being a part of DHH?
Giandomenico Sica: “There is a sort of a natural union in the sense that all of our companies are working in the same industry – they are doing pretty much the same activity but in different markets. They might be facing similar challenges and finding the solution in a group is usually easier. For example, if company A faces a certain issue and company B faced the same in the past, perhaps company A can apply the same solution to the problem.
There is a lot of interlinking and internal communications between companies in DHH.
Of course, every single company within DHH is focused on its own goal. DHH, in this sense, is more of an environment that supports entrepreneurs on a multitude of levels and helps them grow.”
What do you have in mind for DHH group for the rest of the year?
Giandomenico Sica: “We are working hard on the M&A side, I am not certain if we will close any deals until the end of 2019, but we are surely building the strong foundation for new interesting deals to come.
In the past, we made a lot of micro acquisitions – we’ve acquired companies with 1 million euro in revenue or a bit less. Now, we are switching our focus to bigger companies.
Regarding the organic growth, there is a lot of work planned in product innovation and development fields. For instance, in Slovenia, we are working on the hybrid hosting, while Sysbee, one of our newest brands, is also working on a new product.
Also, there will be a lot of efforts put into the integrations of the acquisitions we did in the past. For example, this year, we saw a merge of two companies – mCloud and plus.rs. ”