Global Data- the UK Data Business you have never heard of

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Global Data is one of those public companies that fascinates me in the data world. Not well known. Based outside the US, in the UK. But a fantastic data company with rich data assets. On the surface, it reminds me a lot of IHS which Markit bought many years ago. Lots of rich industry-specific datasets covering all sorts of niches like Apparel, Construction, Travel & Tourism, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Sport, Packaging and so many more. In a world of LLM’s eating data at speeds we have never seen before, you would think a data-rich asset like Global Data would be exploding with new revenue, new clients and new use cases.

If you look into Global Data, with a market cap of $2.36B, and $345m in revenue, it is growing. They recently took in $550m by selling 40% of their healthcare business to Inflexion. With this new capital, they have said they will focus more on M&A opportunities in the Healthcare, Consumer, and Technology verticals. They have a history of acquisitions, having acquired Internet Business Group, Current Analysis, and many different assets from Informa including Datamonitor Financial, Datamonitor Consumer, and MarketLine.

What’s the next targets for Global Data? I would think they double down on the verticals where they have experience and continue to pick up niche vertical data providers. Companies like Aggregate Intelligence come to mind since they cover numerous verticals and bring in a lot of new clients in the US. With a focus on the consumer market, do they look to acquire a transaction data company? Maybe go big and acquire Yodlee from Envestnet? Or get one of the data analytics companies that sit on the consumer transaction data like Consumer Edge or Earnest? These may be too focused on selling into financial markets and less focused on selling to consumer corporations. That being said maybe this broadens their distribution. There are other great consumer insights data companies. Many are owned by PE firms such as the NPD & IRI merger now called Circana.

Some of the best insights for consumers tend to come from panels and surveys. Maybe Global Data doubles down on AI to build out automated survey capabilities or they purchase transcripts from expert networks. There are also some fantastic smaller survey companies like Bespoke Intel that seem like a natural fit.

Then there comes the distribution and awareness. How does Globa data really scale and get more distribution, especially in the US? From what I see it looks like 35% of their revenue comes from the US. How does this double to 70% of revenue in the next 5 years? I think they obviously should be announcing new dataset on Initial Data Offering. All jokes aside, they need more visibility, and awareness, and need to be top of mind for data buyers. Maybe they start to leverage modern consumption-based data marketplaces like CarbonArc.

The ideas are endless on how Global Data could position itself as one of the larger data & information services giants in the next few years. I for one have numerous ideas not only on the acquisition side but on the sales/distribution side. With AI consuming all the data it can get its hands on, I wouldn't be surprised to see companies like Global Data as a winner. If they can’t figure out the growth themselves, I am sure they have many interested acquirers.