Huskies’ Pulling Power

What’s a business owner to do when the sale of the company is about to conclude and he wants to reward some of his colleagues? For Jonathan Forrest, owner of digital ad agency In the Company of Huskies, the solution was to issue a special class of equity that had rights attached to share in €1,440,000 of the sale proceeds.

That resulted in bonuses for fellow directors Damian Hanley (€400k), Brian Leonard (€320k), David Hayes(€280k), John Mathews(€240k), and Jane Madden(€200k).

In April 2023, Huskies, which started out as Cybercom in May 1998, was acquired by Sweden’s Forsman & Bodenfors, owned by Nasdaq-listed Stagwell. The purchaser agreed to pay €5.2m for the Irish agency, of which €0.9m was deferred.

Forrest (53) was sole owner of the business after co-founder Keith Lee left Cybercom in 2008. Lee then started up a similar business,

Strategem, which was acquired by Boston’s Connelly Partners in 2018.

At the time of the Huskies transaction, Mark Penn, chairman and CEO of Stagwell, stated that in addition to traditional omnichannel capabilities, Huskies “blends behavioural science and creativity with social, search, technology and development services to help create pulling power for brands in the connected world, enabling a range of B2C and B2B international clients to deepen their connections with their customers”.

Forrest and Lee were among the first movers to take advantage of the shift of advertising spend to digital. In The Company Of Huskies delivers digital ad campaigns for clients such as Nissan, Allianz and Fáilte Ireland, and over the years has worked with big brands such as Guinness, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, RBS and Vodafone, not just in Ireland but also in the UK and Europe.

The name change from Cybercom to Huskies was effected in 2013. “The name is a metaphor for our relationship with our clients and with our industry,” Forrest said at the time. “Huskies are designed to bring people into challenging and uncharted territory. We have been in digital for 14 years, but we needed to do something different to set ourselves apart.”

Boosting brands through digital is a good business for agencies that have the scale to attract blue-chip clients. Huskies had 29 creative and 27 admin staff employed in 2022, and the six directors shared €1,680,000 in pay and pension remuneration.

Trade debtors in December 2022 were €2.2m, up from €1.3m a year earlier, and balance sheet cash was €1.1m. In the Company of Huskies Ltd owed €490,000 in VAT and €380,000 in payroll taxes at the end of its financial year, balanced out by tax recoverable in the amount of €700,000.

Jonathan Forrest sold Huskies to the Swedes