Monthly Shareholder’s Newsletter - Issue
12-13: December/January 2014-15 - (USOTC:UCPA)
We welcome our investors from around the world once again to the
combined December/January issue of the UCP Newsletter. In it you
will find the information you need as reported by the management of
the various companies that fall under our holding company
umbrella.
From all of us at UCP, we wish you a prosperous New
Year………Ken
UCP News:
At the board meeting held on the 15th of December 2014 the CFO
presented the latest financial forecast for 2014 for the UCP Inc.
Group. In general, the investments from clients were lower than
budgeted thus generating lower gross profit, but still, in
sum, there was strong growth compared to 2013. The income from new
clients - although according to plan - has not been high enough to
compensate for the lower gross profit from current media clients.
Therefore, the costs of the group has been managed accordingly and
is to date lower than budget for the year.
The current forecast is that the group overall will close
the year with a financial result being a significant improvement
compared to 2013, when the group had a loss of 1,096 KUSD. The
group is however not expected to reach break-even, which was
flagged in the Q3 report.
The board further discussed the business development and
growth in 2015. The Group has won many new clients the last year
and the new business drive still has momentum. We expect
continued strong growth in 2015, from generating new
clients and also through the new clients won in 2014. The new
clients won this year
often bought specialist consultancy services within
new areas and many have already announced they will enlarge
the scope of their assignments in 2015. It was further
discussed how to improve the cooperation in the enlarged group
including minority owned entities to harvest opportunities better.
Several measures are planned to achieve the latter, one
step being to implement an executive group consisting of
the CEOs of each entity having regular meetings in 2015.
Another step to strengthen the Group and reach a price per
share that more reflects the company’s strength in the market
place, is to focus on consolidating and strengthen the wholly owned
entities, and disperse of businesses and areas of business not
contributing. The board decided to focus on this in the business
plan being produced for 2015/2016, to be reviewed at the next board
meeting.
The meeting also discussed the proposal from shareholders to
have an Investors’ Relations Company and concluded that there could
not be a justification for this new expense. At the moment, the
hiring of an external agency would not improve the shareholder’s
information, as the information shared and distributed by the
company still has to be produced by the company. It was however
decided to reconsider this decision after the first half of the
year (2015).
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3Kronor Stockholm
Mia Forsgren, CEO from the Stockholm office reports in that…
“From my point of view the summary of the year has been a real
evolutionary one. Lot of things going on not only from our side but
also from all media. Our focus has been and is to help our clients
to take on their digital leadership.
A lot of new clients have signed on to 3Kronor this past year.
Not only new ones but new kind of clients as well. And our
assignments have positively morphed into a more communications
advisory perspective.”
Mia states that it is the office’s goal to be an industry leader
within the following key areas: Buying media, Programmatic,
Technics, Search, Conversation, Production, Branding and
Sustainability (through their 7-step process power to communicate
that clients receive).
This past month, 3Kronor added on the following new clients:
Glue Home (a digital lock and key system), Järvsö Destination (ski
and summer resort in Sweden), SAS Finland, California Wine
Institute, Stella Advokater (law firm) and EMC cloud computing.
We can also proudly report that there were no clients lost.
New employees: Tom Nymark was recently hired as project
coordinator. He has great talent with a keen sense of business. He
has been doing his internship with us the last 3 months and now he
is full time.
In other important news, we produced a TV campaign for In
Sight’s client Cellbes and 3Kronor Stockholm partnered with
Opentopic for Content Marketing ROI. Here’s how it was reported in
the trades:
“Award-winning Swedish communications agency 3Kronor selects
Opentopic's content marketing platform to power content discovery
and curation for global clients New York, NY - November 25, 2014 -
Opentopic, the NYC-based company providing a content marketing
platform that enables companies to more effectively engage and
acquire customers through curated content, today announced a
partnership with 3Kronor, an award-winning Swedish communications
agency. As a result of this partnership, 3Kronor will leverage
Opentopic's content marketing platform to power content curation
programs for its clients to accelerate content marketing
ROI.
Our objective was to enable an effective and scalable content
marketing offering for our clients said Mia Forsgren, CEO of
3Kronor. After a close look at the content marketing landscape, we
found that Opentopic’s content marketing platform, with its ability
to find exactly the right content from the vast landscape of
digital information regardless of topic, format or language,
provides the best solution to put our clients on the fast-track to
real content marketing ROI.
At the core of Opentopic’s platform is a content discovery engine
that provides the industry’s most comprehensive view of the digital
content landscape. Unlike other platforms that provide limited
search capabilities or restrict sourcing to licensed content,
Opentopic draws from the full web spectrum, including search
engines, RSS feeds, and even social media. The combination of
search technology and influencer mapping ensures that any Opentopic
client, regardless of industry or audience, can find the most
relevant, high-quality content to engage and acquire
customers.”
http://www.ekonominyheter.se/pressmeddelanden/3kronor-ingar-partnerskap-med-opentopic-for-content-marketing-roi,122118
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3Kronor Copenhagen
Hereby the news from the Danish office. We continue working with
existing clients and so far there have been no losses. This month
we have signed a contract with a new client called Proactor. This
is a artist management agency who represents professional
musicians, comedians, actors and speakers from both Denmark and
abroad. We are currently running our first campaign with them right
now for a comedy show. http://www.proactor.dk/#!english--deutsch/cztc
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HowCom/HowCom Evolution - Sweden
HowCom reported in the following news:
New Hires:
There were no new hires during December. However, in the coming
months new employees will be hired in the Digital and TV
departments.
Client Wins:
No new clients in December but others are on the horizon.
Client News:
No news out of the ordinary, however the busy December month
includes both late campaign planning for 2014 as well as 2015
strategies.
General:
The current market situation for TV drives the client towards
increased online investments for 2015. Mobile also grows in
interest, especially targeting the younger target audiences.
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Native Clicks – Spain
Native Clicks believes in making the complex seem simple.
Therefore, they continue to uniquely apply a step-by-step marketing
model for their clients so that together with their customers they
can easily and with minimal effort, get started and create
effective results immediately. As they continue forward, Native
Clicks reports in that in the past month, there was no client
wins/losses and no new employees. However, 2015 is looking
bright.
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In Sight - Norway
New clients:
There were no new clients this period.
New business activities that took place:
We had a prospective new client meeting with SATS/Elixia health
club management – with another meeting scheduled for January.
As to employees, competence development and staffing, Pål
Sørensen a senior consultant is leaving the company in January. We
are currently searching for his replacement. We will most likely
have 2 student internships during 2015 to work with digital.
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About United Communications Partners
United Communications Partners is a communication holding group
with award winning subsidiaries and operational focus in Europe and
North America. For more information please visit our website:
www.ucpworld.com or find us on the OTC Market Wire
News as well as iHub, news wire gateway to Reuters, DowJones,
Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, WSJ and many more news reporting
services.
NICLAS FRÖBERG
CARL JOHAN GRANDINSON LARS
BLOMBERG ANNA-KARIN DARLIN
KENNETH S. ROSENTHAL
Questions/Comments:
United Communications Partners
291 Broadway, Suite 302
New York, NY 10007
email: ken.rosenthal@ucpworld.com