EPAM Buys UK Firm, Eyes Growth In Europe

EPAM Systems announced it has acquired a digital consulting agency in London, in order to strengthen its capabilities in the UK and western Europe, the company said.

The news comes the same day the Newtown, Pa.-based firm posted strong third quarter earnings results which showed it grew revenue 24 percent, year over year. The market responded sending EPAM shares higher $7.82 to $127.29 an increase of 6.55 percent.

TH_NK, which also has offices in Newcastle and Liverpool, was founded in 2004 and will be folded in to EPAM’s Consulting and Digital Engagement Practices, the company said.

“TH_NK brings a high level of consultants and customer engagement experience -- expertise that expands upon Global Digital and the organizational consultant capabilities within UK and Europe,” said EPAM CEO Arkadiy Dobkin, during a call with analysts and investors. “This acquisition should further enhance our ability to meet customer demand for dynamic design-led consulting, digital products innovation, and advanced business solutions, helping us to build platform speed of scale.”

EPAM said the acquisition will also enhance the company's global product and design offerings. Ranked as one of the top digital agencies in the UK, TH_NK works with customers through its “unique collaboration approach, helping them strategize for the future and develop in-house capabilities that enable organizational change and growth,” said EPAM in a statement.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“EPAM is combining its engineering excellence with world-class creative, business and customer focused thinking, and we are thrilled to be part of that journey," Tarek Nseir, founding partner of TH_NK and co-president of the British Interactive Media Association, said in a statement. "For the last 15 years, we have built an exceptional team that prides itself on delivering truly game-changing strategies in collaboration with our global clients.

TH_NK, EPAM said, offers customers full-scale digital transformation across all aspects of the enterprise-level change, beginning with organization and culture up through customer experience and technology.

"TH_NK's collaborative, agile approach is different from traditional consultancies or agencies, and by bringing their model into EPAM, we can meet our customers' demand for business and design-led consulting, creative thinking, digital platform innovation expertise, and the ability to deliver everything they need at speed and scale," said Jason Harman, Co-Head Global Business, SVP, EPAM, in a statement.

EPAM, No. 31 on CRN’s 2018 Solution Provider 500 list, said revenue for the quarter ending Sept. 30 was $468.1 million. That translated to an earnings per share of $1.15 on net income of $65.6 million.

The company said its largest vertical, financial services, grew 18.1 percent year-over-year, that was followed by travel and consumer which grew 21.9 percent, software and hi-tech grew approximately 20.1 percent, business information and media posted 27.2 percent growth, while life sciences and healthcare grew 40.3 percent.

EPAM said its emerging verticals experienced 31.4 percent growth driven primarily by clients in industrial engineering and energy.

“Our results for the first three quarters of fiscal 2018 point to a very consistent story of our ability to execute and grow in the market that demands high-end expertise and ever-changing cutting-edge capabilities spread across multi-functional teams and geographical locations,” Dobkin told investors.