Datacom is New Zealand's second-biggest technology exporter behind Fisher & Paykel. Photo / Natalie Slade.
Datacom is New Zealand's second-biggest technology exporter behind Fisher & Paykel. Photo / Natalie Slade.
Datacom Group has released its annual results, showing the IT service company's profit was down 45 per cent to $35 million, despite lifting year-on-year revenue to $937 million.
Datacom CEO Jonathan Ladd said continued growth the ability to invest back into the business on the back of a strong cashflow "is exactly where we want to be".
Datacom's revenue increased 6.3 per cent to $937m from last years' $881m.
Profit before tax was $35.3m, down from the previous year's $64.7m.
The previous year was abnormally high due to the $25 million divestment of the company's Asian contact centre business, Ladd said.
"We disposed of that asset at a very good price and that therefore inflated the profit last year."
In the most recent financial year, Datacom had increased its investment to $11.3m in operational expenditure, predominantly in the company's intellectual property and vertical markets specialisation.
"On a trading basis, we carry on growing as always," he said.
"Our revenue basis is still showing an above 11 per cent compound annual growth rate for the last 10 years."
Highlights from the past year included the continual growth of Datacom's New Zealand business - in both the public and private sectors, he said.
"As well as that, we've significantly increased our contracted revenue base in Australia."
In the past financial year Datacom was awarded the contract to supply ICT systems and support services to the Australian Government Department of Health, with an initial 5 year contract value of A$242m (NZ$272m).
The contract was 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, Ladd said.
Datacom CEO Jonathan Ladd.
It reflected the changing way services were required to be delivered to customers and was a positive sign that the company's focus on developing flexible as a service models was the right direction for customers, he said.
Large New Zealand projects completed in the past year included the relocation of Fonterra's data centres to Datacom's Hamilton hub.
"That was a project that took us many months to do and a lot of careful planning because of the critical nature of being able to do it.
"Both we and the customer were very pleased with how that went."
