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One of the country's largest software exporters, Orion Health, is eyeing a sharemarket listing in the next couple of years as its annual turnover heads towards $100 million.
Orion Health specialises in providing clinical information technology for the health sector and has about 1000 customers in 20 countries.
The company, which began life with five Auckland-based employees in 1993, now has 270 staff, offices in six countries, and generated revenue of $42 million last year.
This puts it slightly ahead of another New Zealand technology export success story, Christchurch-based Jade Software, which reported revenue of $40.7 million for the past year.
"One day we'll list, but that will be a couple of years out and probably when we get closer to $100 million of revenue," said Orion chief executive and majority shareholder Ian McCrae.
McCrae, an engineer who was a telecommunications consultant before founding Orion, owns 70.5 per cent of the company. Its other major shareholders are venture capitalist Andrew Clements, who owns 10 per cent, and Navman founder Peter Maire, with 4.8 per cent. Orion staff own the remaining 14.7 per cent of the business.
McCrae said no decision had been made as to whether the eventual listing would take place on the New Zealand or Australian stock exchange, although he, Clements and Maire were staunch believers in Orion remaining a New Zealand-based business.
The company continued to grow revenues at an average of about 40 per cent a year and had the potential to eventually turn over hundreds of millions of dollars annually, he said.
"The company has huge potential and we all see it would be a real shame for a company like Orion to end up under foreign ownership and hollowed out like many companies before us have been," he said.
"So there's a commitment to grow the company to a substantial sized company, and a New Zealand-homed and New Zealand-headquartered company as well."
There were also good commercial reasons for keeping the business New Zealand-based, he said, given the local health sector was fairly innovative compared to other parts of the world.
"What you find is New Zealand is a good place to develop new health products. Some of the things we do here today we will sell overseas in a couple of years' time when the markets are ready."
Orion notched up its latest significant business win this month when it picked up a $5 million-plus contract with Canada's New Brunswick Department of Health to provide a province-wide electronic health record system for the department's 1200 physicians. Orion has previously supplied technology to a health authority in Alberta and McCrae said the latest Canadian win was an additional foothold into an important market.
"It [New Brunswick] is one of the top projects to win. All the big organisations went after it, and so for us to win it that's great," he said.
McCrae said one of Orion's biggest challenges was ensuring it had effective communications and business processes in place around the world.
"When you're a small start-up you're typically all in one room, so communications is dead easy, you just shout across the room. When you're across the world shouting doesn't work so well."
