Mobivity Completes Acquisition of Belly, a Leading Digital Loyalty Solution for Brick and Mortar Businesses
Acquisition Expands Mobivity’s Customer Engagement Platform Deployment by More Than 2,000 Merchant Locations
PHOENIX, Nov. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mobivity Holdings Corp. (OTCQB: MFON), creators of the award winning re•currency platform that increases customer visits and spend in restaurant, retail, and personal care brands, today announced that they have completed the acquisition of the Belly product line assets from Hatch Loyalty. Belly is a leading digital loyalty solution for brick and mortar businesses. Under the terms of the agreement, Mobivity paid $3M which was funded through $2M of cash on hand and $1M of debt. The acquisition is expected to add more than $2M in top-line annual revenues, add more than $200k in annual cashflows, and will bring more than 2,000 deployed merchant locations and over 7 Million loyalty members to Mobivity’s accelerating market reach.
Hatch Loyalty is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and received funding from investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Lightbank. The Belly solution has been “Making Businesses Personal” since its launch in 2011.
Mobivity anticipates introducing an enhanced version of the Belly tablet-based loyalty product that is tied directly to the transactional data surfaced with Mobivity’s re•currency platform, allowing brands to tap into the full sphere of loyalty and one-to-one customer attribution for the first time. Similar to Mobivity’s re•currency solution, Belly employs a SaaS-based monthly recurring revenue business model with most of its client base across brick and mortar industries. Adding a leading digital loyalty solution to Mobivity’s re•currency platform, the best way to capture transactional data, analyze and expose unique sales insights, and motivate customers to increase frequency and spend will result in an even more valuable positioning to new and existing Mobivity clients.
“Our re•currency platform drives mobile engagement to more than one in 30 Americans every month, and aggregates, normalizes, and activates an increasing volume of more than 50 million brick and mortar transactions every week. The addition of a method of rewarding loyalty, as well as adding a highly rated smartphone app to our platform, was a simple decision for us,” said Dennis Becker, Mobivity Chairman and CEO. “Running a loyalty program without increasing customer frequency is at best a retention program, and at worst running in place. We believe that with this acquisition and the integration of the Belly loyalty solution into our re•currency platform, our clients will begin to not simply reward a customers’ next visit, which was likely to happen anyway, but that they will be enabled to reward actions that lead to higher customer frequency and spend. You can’t measure true loyalty and frequency without being able to attribute transactions to customers, which is increasingly difficult for brick and mortar brands, and we look forward to redefining loyalty and solving this problem for brands and their customers for years to come.”
With this acquisition, Mobivity anticipates that the Belly application will be integrated directly into the re•currency platform, adding a loyalty application to the platform that allows brands around the world capture unique transactional data directly at the point-of-sale with re•capture, send personalized mobile communications with re•ach, print smarter communications in-store with re•ceipt, motivate employee performance with re•up, and analyze the effect these efforts have on your business with re•cognition.
Mobivity Chairman and CEO Dennis Becker plans to discuss the future of loyalty and Mobivity’s plans for the integration of Belly into the re•currency platform on the company’s Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call, scheduled for today, November 14, 2018, at 4:30PM Eastern Time (ET).
Conference Call Information:
Date: Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Time: 4:30 P.M. Eastern Time (ET)
Dial in Number for U.S. Callers: 1-877-705-6003
Dial in Number for International Callers: 1-201-493-6725
The call will also be accompanied live by webcast over the Internet and accessible at http://public.viavid.com/index.php?id=132045.
A replay will be available for 2 weeks starting on November 14, 2018 at approximately 7:30 P.M. ET. To access the replay, please dial 1-844-512-2921 in the U.S. and 1-412-317-6671 for international callers. The conference ID is 13684616. The replay will also be available on the Company’s website under the investor relations section.
About Hatch Loyalty
Hatch Loyalty has built a customer activation engine designed to connect retailers to their customers in the moments that matter most. The platform offers a suite of flexible, dynamic, intuitive products that empower enterprise retailers and partners to build comprehensive customer activation programs. Hatch is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, visit hatchloyalty.com.
About Mobivity
Brick and mortar stores struggle to manage customer connections in a digital world. Mobivity provides a platform to connect national restaurants, retailers, personal care brands, and their partners, with customers to increase retention, visits, and spend. Mobivity’s re•currency suite of products increases customer engagement and frequency by capturing detailed point-of-sale transaction records, analyzing customer habits, and motivating customers and employees through data-driven messaging applications and rewards. For more information about Mobivity, visit mobivity.com or call (877) 282-7660.
Forward Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Mobivity Holdings Corp. within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Those forward-looking statements include statements regarding the benefits of recent additions to the Company’s management team; the Company’s expectations for the growth of the Company's operations and revenue; and the advantages and growth prospects of the mobile marketing industry. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual circumstances, events or results may differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to differences include, but are not limited to, our ability to successfully integrate our recent additions to management; our ability to develop the sales force required to achieve our development and revenue goals; our ability to raise additional working capital as and when needed; changes in the laws and regulations affecting the mobile marketing industry and those other risks set forth in Mobivity Holdings Corp.'s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 filed with the SEC on April 11th, 2018 and subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Mobivity Holdings Corp. cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Mobivity Holdings Corp. does not undertake, and specifically disclaims any obligation to update or revise such statements to reflect new circumstances or unanticipated events as they occur.
Media Contacts
Jennifer Handshew • Marketing Communications, Mobivity
jennifer.handshew@mobivity.com • (917) 359-8838
Dennis Becker • Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mobivity
(877) 282-7660
Investor Relations Contacts
Brett Maas • Managing Partner, Hayden IR
brett@haydenir.com • (646) 536-7331
Jeff Stanlis • Partner and Vice President, Communications, Hayden IR
jeff@haydenir.com • (602) 476-1821
Charles Mathews • Chief Financial Officer, Mobivity
(877) 282-7660
Released November 14, 2018
