TransPerfect Revenues Climb to USD 1.16 Billion in 2022, up 4.6% Year-on-Year

US-based TransPerfect has released its financial results for 2022. After hitting a milestone in 2021 — when TransPerfect became the first language service provider (LSP) ever to record annual revenues of USD 1bn or more —, the Super Agency grew by 4.6% to USD 1.16bn in 2022.

In dollar terms, TransPerfect grew by USD 51m, with the company once again retaining its title as the world’s largest LSP by revenue. TransPerfect’s President and CEO, Phil Shawe, told Slator, “about half our growth was organic and about half could be attributed to recent M&A partners.”

As a privately-owned company headquartered in the US, TransPerfect is not required to disclose revenues publicly, but has chosen to do so on a regular basis.

Discussing regional activity, Shawe said, “Based on the strong US dollar, we experienced what we hope is an anomaly: some global divisions grew when measuring in their respective local currencies, but actually contracted when converting that same performance into US dollars for accounting purposes.”

On a vertical basis, Shawe highlighted the travel sector as delivering strong growth in 2022. “Perhaps relatedly, our interpretation business also grew significantly and outperformed expectations for the year,” he added. Other outperforming divisions included Trial Interactive eClinical and TransPerfect Legal Solutions (TLS), which “both had record growth years,” with the latter growing 11% in 2022.

MT and Generative AI

TransPerfect’s technology products and related services were also a major driver of growth in 2022. The company’s machine translation (MT) solution, GlobalLink NOW, saw a 100% increase in sales in 2022.

Shawe said the biggest demand for GlobalLink NOW MT was coming from “some of the most established verticals within TransPerfect” such as life sciences, finance, legal, and travel. There was also good uptake among retail, manufacturing, media, and gaming customers.

Shawe also noted that customers either purchase GlobalLink NOW MT “via GlobalLink AI Portal and APIs, [or] use it in conjunction with our flagship GlobalLink platforms such as Project Director, TransPort, and OneLink.”

Asked about his take on the current buzz around generative AI, Shawe said he believes “the hype around ChatGPT and Large Language Models is certainly justified and will have a profound effect on our industry.” He continued, “We consider ourselves the market leader in providing human-in-the-loop automation workflows and see this new generation of AI models as a powerful addition to that toolset.”

Mergers and Acquisitions

TransPerfect acquired two companies in the second half of 2022: UK-based virtual data room (VDR) technology provider, Sterling Technology, and France-based media localization provider, Hiventy.

Discussing the contribution of Sterling Technology thus far, Shawe said, “In the midst of a challenging M&A market, Sterling has continued to deliver growth in Europe. And, we’re excited to help the Sterling team bring their virtual data room (VDR) solution to the U.S. market in earnest in 2023.”

Meanwhile, “the Hiventy integration is progressing,” he observed, pointing out that the acquisition adds scale to TransPerfect’s media localization operations in France, which include previously acquired companies, Lylo and AGM.

In addition, “Hiventy’s BeeHive and Agora technologies have brought complementary capabilities to MediaNext and StudioNext.” Hiventy’s tech will enhance TransPerfect’s project management platform for dubbing and subtitling with additional content distribution and asset management features.

Asked for an update on trading in 2023, Shawe said “Our first month’s revenue is looking similar to January 2022. Since January 2022 was up more than 20% from 2021, we believe this bodes well for 2023.”