Revenue jump for Datacom as it closes in on the $1b mark

Datacom has reported a 6.3% jump in revenue to $937 million for its 2015 financial year.

After-tax profit fell from the previous year's $51.4 million to $24.3 million.

The company says its 2014 profit was "unusually high" because of the $25 million it earned from the sale of its Malaysia and Philippines-based call centre business (which also reduced staff from 4500 to 3650 as the deal closed in the 2014 financial year; this year, staff numbers increased 9% to 4095, 2655 of whom are based in New Zealand).

Wellington-based Datacom sells IT services across New Zealand, Australia and parts of Asia.

Its two largest shareholders are NBR Rich Lister John Holdsworth (52.3%) and the NZ Super Fund (37.6%), which bought out NZ Post in late 2012. The TIN100 2014 put Datacom at No 2 (behind Chinese-owned F&P Appliances) on its list of the 100 largest high-tech exporters.

The year saw IDC's market share analysis indicate that Datacom NZ is now the largest IT services provider, inclusive of business consultancy services, in the New Zealand market.

Datacom group chairman Craig Boyce says the result "maintains the 10-year compound annual growth rate for revenue at 11.2%.”

Group chief executive Jonathan Ladd says, “The increases in revenue and trading profit alongside our continuing investment of $11.3 million operating expenditure and $30 million capital expenditure reflects the group’s balanced push for business growth.”

Datacom's New Zealand business has increased its revenue year on year, with an increase of 9.2%, showing notable uplift in its regional centres, Datacom says.

Successful delivery of data centre relocations and outsourced data centre network and systems management for Fonterra and the transition to full outsourcing and service aggregation for the Ministry of Business were project highlights.

The company's Australia Systems business increased revenues by 6%. New business included Datacom being awarded the contract to supply ICT systems and support services to the Australian Department of Health, with an initial five-year contract value of $A242 million. This contract is a departure from traditional IT services outsourcing, with a structure to provide an outcomes-based fully managed service, with consumption-based pricing, and a strong focus on service delivery, Datacom says. It is a sign that the ‘As a Service’ model is the right direction for customers, Mr Ladd says.

Datacom runs its own data centres across Australasia, as well as partnering with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and others. Last month, the company became the first Australasian partner to pass Amazon Web Services’ Managed Services Partner audit.

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