Macquarie Telecom delivers strong half year result

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 February 2009 04:53

IT Industry - Market

Macquarie Telecom (ASX: MAQ) doubled its EBITDA to $12.0m for the six months to 31 December 2008 compared to the six months ended 31 December 2007. Revenue was up 2.4 percent to $129.3m and the company reported and EBIT profit of $4.3m compared to an EBIT loss of $1.8m in the previous corresponding period.

The company's data centre business continues to make a growing contribution to revenue and EBITDA. Data and hosting revenues grew 20.9 percent to $47.6m and data and hosting EBITDA grew 53.5 percent to $4.6m. These figures represented an increase from 31 to 37 percent of total revenues. The company reported a NPAT of $3.1m compared to a loss of $1.6m in H1 2008. It ended the half year with $27.68m in cash and cash equivalents, up from $18.28m a year ago.

CEO David Tudehope said: "Our Hosting business has firmly established itself as the market leader in mission critical application hosting." Major new customers signed during the half included Cricket Australia and Global Red. Macquarie claims that a third of data and hosting revenue comes from corporate & government clients. It claims also that its hosting success has been "driven by thought leadership around. green IT, enterprise server virtualisation accredited security."

Despite a 9.0 percent decline in voice revenues to $61.1m, the company was able to almost double voice EBITDA to $8.9m. It said that voice's share of opex had been reduced and resources re-allocated to the data and hosting business to support future growth. It also managed to achieve a substantial ($5.8m) reduction to $76.2m in its biggest expense item, carrier costs. Mobile revenues were steady at $14.7m.