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Igor Žonja: We are ready to pursue acquisitions in Croatia and beyond

We are finishing 2015 with small, but positive shifts in Croatian society. The situation in Europe and around it is unstable, and many fear a new crisis. A crisis is unlikely to occur in 2016, but the negative security situation threatens all of Europe.

In Croatia, voting has concluded, but we still do not have a government and do not know when we will have one or how stable it will be. After 24 years of independence, we see a greater desire among Croatian citizens for change. I would like these changes to happen as soon as possible and to be as significant and, of course, successful as possible.

We are growing faster than expected
State and local authorities should privatize most companies in their portfolio as soon as possible and enable the best to operate in all areas, whether it is hospitals, schools, kindergartens, or something else.
I am a member or chair of several supervisory boards in companies operating in Croatia, as well as in a company that exclusively operates in the Baltic countries. The worst situation is where the state or local community still has an important role in managing the company.
I hope for further positive shifts in Croatia in 2016 and further acceleration of GDP growth. Although we had quarters in 2011 that were positive, inherited dilemmas and confusion and ignorance in 2012 brought us a difficult and poorly utilized year and slow and minor changes thereafter. I hope we have learned something and that 2016 will be better, although current migrations can completely disrupt us, as can an unstable government and repeated elections.
How is Moj posao doing? Given that most of our revenue is tied to the real sector of the Croatian economy, which significantly declined from 2009 to 2014, Moj posao managed to achieve positive results throughout that period after the sharp decline in 2009 and recorded increasing growth year after year. Given that in 2015 Croatian GDP is finally growing, we have significantly accelerated our growth. Namely, if GDP grows by 1.2 percent, it is expected that our revenue growth will be up to five percent, and we have grown six times faster than that.
We hope this means that there are positive shifts in other companies operating in the Croatian market because we collaborate with more than six thousand companies annually.
By networking with job portals from around the world and the competitive products we offer in the market, we successfully compete with global competitors. Currently, more than 50 percent of our clients use the system for collecting and processing candidate applications, which distinguishes us from competitors in the domestic market, and we have also developed software for virtual fairs and online research.

We are expanding across Europe
What we provide to our clients are innovative solutions that are comparable to those on the global market, and the convincingly largest and best reach to employers distinguishes us from all competitors. The employee satisfaction survey software is the only validated tool for this type of research in the region. The virtual fair software is faster, simpler, better, and more affordable than the most well-known global solutions.
I must note that our new products are also used in the region, primarily in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we have managed to secure sales of our products in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and I expect expansion into some other European countries in 2016. Thus, we would grow next year not only in the advertising services segment but also in the export of our own software solutions.
The year 2016 will be focused on developing existing products and adapting them to the European market. We are also preparing to create some new solutions to respond to the challenges of the market in which we operate. We are ready to pursue acquisitions in Croatia and beyond, with some negotiations already underway. Of course, we are monitoring our group Alma Media, which has just launched a major acquisition in the Nordic countries. We will analyze the possibility of doing business in other industries, not just in the labor market.