Everyone’s favourite micro investing app is growing!
After their recent milestone of $1 billion in Funds Under Management, Raiz (ASX: RZI) is using that momentum to drive further growth, today announcing that a strategic investment has been made in the Company by Seven West Media (ASX: SWM).
Australia’s largest diversified media business, Seven West Media is the owner of Channel 7, Racing.com, The Sunday Times and the West Australian. The Group is also the broadcast partner of the AFL, Cricket Australia and the Olympics.
The partnership will see Raiz supercharge their advertising and marketing approach with a concentrated campaign executed in conjunction with Seven. The new approach will hopefully allow Raiz to upscale significantly over the next 1-2 years.
The alignment of both companies’ interests has resulted in Seven injecting $10 million into Raiz via share Placement to hold 6.6% of the Company.
Raiz Joint Group CEO, Brendan Malone commented on the new relationship, saying: “This investment by Seven into the Raiz business is a strong endorsement of Raiz’s business model and management’s ability to execute. After extensive discussions with Seven, we have concluded that its media assets and reach are an excellent means to promote Raiz’s products and services to achieve the accelerated growth we require.
The platform has seen 500,000 Australians learn to save and invest to work towards financial freedom in the six years it has been in operation.
“With Seven we will be able to re-engage with many of these customers as well as expand our reach to a fresh audience and explain why Raiz is an excellent product for them for saving and investing in and outside of superannuation, even if they have broking accounts or high interest savings accounts with other organisations. We are not an either-or product,” Malone said.
“We are excited to be working on new creative campaigns that can not only be used in Australia but in the Southeast Asian countries where we operate, determining a media strategy in conjunction with Seven to maximise our reach, and building brand stock that will not only accelerate growth in the next one to two years but put us in a good position to continue our growth trajectory beyond this.”
Their investment into Raiz is by no means new territory for Seven West Media which has a strong track record of investing in tech companies. Previous investments include taking early equity positions in Airtasker, HealthEngine and SocietyOne. This however, will be the first undertaken since CEO James Warburton took the helm of the previously embattled media Company before turning its fortunes around over the past three years.
“Raiz is a disruptive digital player that is targeting a huge market opportunity,” said Warburton.
“Combining Raiz’s consumer offering, which has widespread appeal, with SWM’s scale and audience reach provides a significant opportunity to grow the business and is a strong fit with the strategy of our Seven West Ventures Group.”
Payment for the $10 million investment will be split as $2 million cash and $8 million in advertising across the Seven network to reach over 18 million people.
Since restructuring Seven West Media by divesting legacy businesses while re-focusing its content strategy to leverage its video-on-demand capabilities, Warburton has returned Seven to be a media force after years of financial strain. The success of these strategies have been reflected in major growth in SWM’s share price having traded at $0.23 in November 2020 to now be trading at $0.62 just 12 months later.
Included in that period was Seven West Media’s FY21 results which was highlighted by $229 million in underlying EBIT which represented a 141% increase on the previous year, realised by $200m saved from Warburton initiatives.
Samantha Freidin is a business journalist at Emerald Financial whilst also completing a Masters of Marketing and Digital Communications at Monash University.
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