Clarion Chases Acquisitions, Middle East Expansion as Sale Awaits

Clarion Events is for sale after being held by its current private equity owner for seven and a half years. That doesn’t mean it’s sitting still.
As it awaits a suitor, the London-based company is searching for acquisitions of its own, expanding in the Middle East, focused on data, as well as on the organic growth of big shows to new geographies.
Clarion’s been in the business for decades and when Covid stopped the company in its tracks, it focused on pulling all of its data together, cleaning it, tagging it and segmenting it. Clarion now has dashboards that can be used to group customers and discover where they are coming from, who they are and more. They’re also honed in on one-to-one networking at shows.
And it’s working.
Clarion has consistently delivered double digit revenue growth, Lisa Hannant, chief executive officer at Clarion, told AMO. Revenue is “considerably north of” £450 million ($549 million) with a 30% profit margin. Owner Blackstone has held Clarion since July 2017, a relatively long time in the private equity world. It’s more than likely that another PE firm will be the next owner.
“The cash flow is great, forward visibility on the business is also really strong, low capex, all of those dynamics PE love. And when it comes to Clarion, there’s still a lot of growth in the business, which would appeal to private equity,” Hannant said. “It’s inevitable that there will be a view that they would look to move into a process within the next 12 to 18 months.”
Niches, Data
Clarion holds massive events like the Global Sources Electronics trade show. Scale is good, but Clarion is trying to niche within those big conferences and create intimate experiences that are becoming increasingly common and desired. Internally, they are called villages and are designed to attend to different segments of an industry or theme and have become part of the company’s philosophy.
“We think about how we design the shows to be able to meet their needs and continue to become critical in the customer attendance if they’re going to go to any one show, want this to be the one show that they go to,” Hannant said.
This is also where data comes in, allowing for curation and connecting people ahead of time. Clarion’s also leaning directly into one-on-one with Clarion Connect.
“There’s one really good example there, we have a brand called Quartz Network, and they are one to one meetings, and through the data that we’re collecting, which is much deeper on customers, we have insight to which companies are looking to procure what,” Hannant said.
They are connected outside of shows via Quartz Network, which Clarion bought in 2020. Quartz’s QN Solutions is an “on-demand solution finding software,” that provides custom shortlists of vetted best-fit providers immediately.
As a result, Clarion has data on what kinds of problems clients are trying to solve, their budgets and decision making cycles that they’re going through, which is collated and collected into the Quartz Network platform and connects vendors and buyers.
The information also helps Clarion figure out what content for shows and then track post-show results.
“That data has been driven through the insight that we have built up through our one to one meetings, which we ran in a live format. But clearly, procurement doesn’t always happen to a schedule, and so having the ability for those individuals and organizations to meet outside of the shows has been really quite valuable,” she said.
Expansion
While Clarion, which has a staff of about 1,800, is big in the U.S., Europe and the UK, it lags in the Middle East.
“The Middle East is a big opportunity for us. We are taking some of our big brands next year and the year after into the UAE and Saudi [Arabia] and we are opening some bases there too,” Hannant said. “On the basis of that, we are also targeting acquisitions in those regions as well, because we’d like to do a combination of acquisitions and organic launches in the region. So that’s definitely an interesting part of our growth story as we go forward.”
Clarion’s also looking at new sectors with new launches already in the works.
“We always think about our growth, both from an organic perspective, growing the existing shows, as I’ve just described, but also, where can we bring some new shows into the market,” Hannant said. “We will continue to pursue acquisitions globally which will help drive growth, again, following the same principles, which is which markets are growth orientated.”
Hannant believes that buyers are now more willing to pay a premium price for premium products. “We would definitely pay at the higher end because it fits our strategy market leading.”
Clarion’s also partnering with associations on expanding their shows, or buying the shows outright and growing them. “We’ve got a really good example in Germany with a consumer electronics association, biggest show in Germany in consumer electronics, and we now have a joint venture with them for their flagship show,” Hannant said.
Associations don’t usually think through a commercial lens, and Clarion is helping to evolve and sophisticate their events, which usually represent a good chunk of revenue for the groups. The association events also tend to be where associates exhibit, which can be a big investment, and they also want to see better returns.
“Whilst they know their market, how we can then translate that into a vibrant, innovative show, which is a really good experience for the exhibitors and the visitors, is definitely where we come into play,” Hannant said.