Polling and market research company YouGov has acquired New Zealand-based generative AI company Yabble in a £4.5m cash deal as it slightly notches up its full-year guidance.
The data analytics firm said on Tuesday it has bought Yabble for £4.5m in cash and a three-year earn-out contingent on revenue targets, with sellers reinvesting part of the proceeds into YouGov shares.
As a result, YouGov has applied for 546,951 new ordinary shares to be admitted to AIM, effective 9 August 2024, bringing the total to 117,673,290 shares in issue.
YouGov has already been working with Yabble over the past year on the launch of its first client-facing AI product, called YouGov AI Qual Explorer.
Initially, YouGov will integrate Yabble’s tech with its core data products to speed up the development of AI-enabled features for use in the company’s market research process.
“I have seen how powerful the combination of YouGov’s data and Yabble’s technology is,” said YouGov chief Steve Hatch, “and I am excited for more clients to experience this.
“This acquisition will transform the way our clients derive insights from YouGov Profiles’ 2m datapoints and gain maximum value from YouGov’s unique dataset,” he added.
Kathryn Topp, Yabble co-founder and chief executive, said: “The best AI runs on the best quality data and YouGov’s proprietary panel is the gold standard in attitude and opinion data.
“The combination of Yabble’s cutting-edge AI tools and YouGov’s quality dataset will provide clients with the best, fastest, most effortless insights available.”
It comes as YouGov also posted a full-year trading update today.
In June, YouGov shares plummeted 35 per cent after it downgraded its revenue and profit forecasts as sales bookings came in lower than expected.
But YouGov now expects to report revenue of around £327m to £330m and adjusted operating profit of £43m to £46m for the full year 2024, slightly ahead of the revised guidance in June.
Its research division experienced mid to single-digit growth due to strong custom research performance despite declines in its data services arm. The company said it expects its data products division to return to growth in 2025 through a “focused sales approach”.
As of 31 July 2024, YouGov has a cash pile of about £70m.