ChannelLife New Zealand - Industry insider news for technology resellers
Story image
Bulletproof still experiencing strong revenue growth
Fri, 19th Feb 2016
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Bulletproof has experienced successes across all areas of the business and strong revenue growth in the half year ended December 31, 2015, thanks largely to an increasing demand for the vendor's wider, consolidated offering, and several customer wins.

Anthony Woodward, Bulletproof CEO, says, “Bulletproof's strategic acquisitions and organic growth initiatives to bring comprehensive end to end cloud services to the market continue to deliver revenue and profitability growth well above market trend.

“Managed cloud revenues were up 72% from H1 FY15, showing the ongoing appeal to customers of our managed public and private offerings.

“ Our rapidly growing professional services practice resulted in once-off revenues growing over 300% compared with H1 FY15, as the demand for partnering to migrate applications picks up across the entire customer base.”

He says Bulletproof's underlying EBIT was up 139% on the corresponding period from FY15, showing sustained profitability while the company continue to invest into the growth opportunity in the cloud services market.

“Being named the 2015 Frost - Sullivan Australia Managed Cloud Service Provider of the Year, cements our clear leadership in the region's cloud services market. We are naturally very pleased with this performance, and look forward to an even stronger full year result,” says Woodward.

Business operating performance

Underlying NPAT of $60k was up from a net loss of $567k in H1 FY15. The company says it has continued to invest into the growth curve to capture the opportunity in the market as shown by the increased growth rate, with staff numbers increasing to 160, including those brought on through the acquisition of Infoplex.

Consolidated hybrid cloud offering meets with market appeal

With the completed acquisition of Infoplex, the company strengthened its private cloud offering with a ISO27001-certified private cloud platform.

The resulting combined offering has strong appeal to customers seeking to migrate from on-premise or private data centers to take advantage of cloud, while meeting stringent regulatory and compliance requirements such as disaster recovery and backup options not typically available in public cloud offerings, according to Bulletproof.

Continued dominance in managed cloud

The ongoing rapid growth of managed cloud revenues is reflective of the company's efforts and continued market leadership in the space, Bulletproof says.

During the period, Bulletproof was awarded Premier Consulting Partner status with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the third year running, and has since been certified with Managed Service Provider capability, following an extensive audit process AWS requires its leading partners to pass.

With a 72% revenue increase on H1 FY15 to $17.3m, strong growth in managed service continues to drive the overall performance of the Company.

Professional services offering builds rapidly

Customers continue to recognise the transformative benefits of migrating their applications to the cloud, according to Bulletproof.

The ongoing growth of professional services reflects the need for customers to work with a trusted partner to analyse, plan, migrate and then manage their applications as they undertake this change. Whether their applications require private, public, or more commonly, hybrid (incorporating public and private into one cohesive service) cloud services, professional services continues to be a requirement, says Bulletproof.

Strong growth in recurring, enterprise-focused revenue

Recurring revenue in H1 FY16 represented over 80% of all revenues, as the company continues to see customers building on their existing cloud footprint when migrating more applications to cloud. Typical customer scale is also growing, with a number of significant enterprise customer wins continuing to build, according to the company.

Product development continues

The company continues to invest in platform product development, aimed at providing key business outcomes for customers and improving operating leverage by automating many common tasks for cloud customers.

This has resulted in the successful testing and deployment of two major retail customers on its retail integration platform, along with successful pilots. The company says it is now gearing up for full sales and marketing activity for its range of managed digital application platform services, expected to deliver revenues in future periods.

Outlook for 2016

Bulletproof expects its strong growth in revenue and profitability to at least meet market trends as scale leads it to benefit from operating leverage, while a wider offering allows for more revenue opportunity across prospective and existing customer bases.

The recently-announced completion of the acquisition of New Zealand's Cloud House business will drive New Zealand cloud services revenue, with approximately four months' contribution to H2 FY16, the company says.