The biggest tech movers on the ASX in 2019

Citadel

Revenue: $99.2 million (down 6.9%)
EBITDA: $23.3 million (down 31.7%)
Net profit: $10.9 million (down 43.8%)
Shares: $3.76 (down 30%)

Delays in some customer contracts brought down Citadel’s results, along with slowed customer spending during the Federal Election in May 2019.

On the upside, Citadel’s software/SaaS revenue grew 23 percent, which chief executive Darren Stanley said was proof that the company’s strategy to transform into a global SaaS provider was the right strategy.

Read the full story here.

JB Hi-Fi

Revenue: $7.1 billion (up 3.5%)
EBIT: $372.8 million (up 6.4%)
Net profit: $249.8 million (up 7.1%)
Shares: $25.85 (up 14.8%)

JB Hi-Fi hinted at further investment in its IT services business, which could arguably be the sleeping giant of the Aussie IT services sector. 

The retail giant that said it intends to improve the profile of the business unit and to strengthen supplier relationships. Investors were also told the company intends to expand its portfolio of IT services and invest in in-house technology to drive the expansion.

Read the full story here.

rhipe

Revenue: $252.5 million (up 28%)
EBITDA: $10 million (up 56%)
Net profit: $6.2 million (up 103%)
Shares: $2.86 (up 140%)

rhipe cracked a new milestone with 600,000 seats for Office365.

Paid customer base grew 80 percent year-on-year to reach 450,000 for the financial year ending 30 June 2019. With the addition of zero fee academic seats, rhipe’s total O365 customer base reached 600,000.

The impact of public cloud growth was clear in rhipe’s annual results (pdf). with CSP (O365 and Microsoft Azure) accounting for 60 percent of the $56 million sales growth.

Read the full story here.

Vita Group

Revenue: $753.7 million (up 10%)
EBITDA: $79.3 million (up 13%)
Net profit: $24.3 million (up 10%)
Shares: $1.31 (up 33.6%)

only covered the results from the ICT business.

The ICT business looked rosy, particularly retail which grew 17 percent, but the business ICT channel dropped 42 percent in revenue. Vita doesn’t break out individual revenue figures for its retail and ICT channels.

Vita announced in June that its remuneration structure had changed once again to accommodate for the telco’s simplified mobility plans. As part of the changes, Vita agreed to forego some of its legacy remuneration components, costing $12-13 million per annum. In exchange, Vita will receive better remuneration for hardware sales, but expects lower remuneration from selling connections to Telstra’s network.

Read the full story here.

Vocus

Revenue: $1.89 billion (up 0.4%)
EBITDA: $360.1 million (down 2%)
Net profit: $105.5 million (down 17%)
Shares: $3.27 (up 41.5%)

Vocus’ newly-minted Network Services business was the shining light in an otherwise flat year for the telco and fibre network builder.

The bulk of channel-specific news came in July when CEO Kevin Russell detailed the company’s three-year turnaround plan.

One new point around the channel was the announcement that Vocus plans to focus more on strategic partnerships with "major technology players" particularly around public cloud, SD-WAN and voice.

Read the full story here.

Kogan

Revenue: $438.7 million (up 6.4%)
EBITDA: $30.1 million (up 15.6 percent)
Net profit: $17.2 million (up 21.9 percent)
Shares: $5.13 (down 30.35%)

Kogan had a bumper year across its now 15-strong collection of business units, but the most significant growth came from its third-party reseller business, Kogan Marketplace.

Marketplace opened for business in March 2019, and since then, brought in $1.5 million in commission-based revenue, helping boost gross profit 12.5 percent to $90.7 million.

Read the full story here.

Data#3

Revenue: $1.4 billion (up 20%)
EBITDA: $28.3 million (25.8%)
Net profit: $18.1 million (28.7%)
Shares: $2.12 (up 32.5%)

Data#3’s tilt at public cloud paid off in a big way, growing 35.3 percent to $362.2 million. The other two primary revenue sources, product and services, also saw major growth.

Product, which includes infrastructure and software, rose 21.3 percent to $1.17 billion, while services, including consulting, project services, support and recruitment, rose 13.3 percent to $246.9 million.

Read the full story here.

Vodafone Australia

For six months to 30 June 2019
Revenue: $1.74 billion (down 1.7%)
EBITDA: $584.6 million (up 14.3%)
Net loss: $153.4 million (down from $92.3 million net loss)

Vodafone Australia said its performance has remained stable in one of its most difficult half-years following the rejection of its proposed merger with TPG.

Vodafone acting CFO Sean Crowley pinned the results on a slowdown on prior periods due to falling ARPU (average revenue per user). ARPU dropped 5.2 percent to $34.52 in the half year, which also includes revenue from MVNO partners Kogan and Lebara.

Read the full story here.

Empired

Revenue: $176 million (up 1%)
EBITDA: $15.2 million (down 10%)
Net loss: $15.3 million (down from $4.8 million profit)
Shares: 27 cents (down 47%)

Empired copped a $15 million loss due to a major write-down of its software assets, despite posting modest revenue growth. The company didn’t go into specifics, but said the write-down was largely due to software assets “that are now being superseded through new technologies and changes in market trends”.

Chief executive Russell Baskerville said it has been a challenging year for the business, but was confident in the company’s outlook. 

Read the full story here.

DWS

Revenue: $163.5 million (up 29.7%)
EBITDA: $26.4 million (up 15.7%)
Net profit: $10.3 million (down 35%)
Shares: $1.17 (down 7.14%)

Melbourne-based IT outsourcer DWS rebounded thanks to its 2018 acquisition of Canberra-based Projects Assured.

DWS bought Projects Assured for $43 million and a year later, thanked the acquisition for the bulk of its new customer wins in federal and state government departments. In FY18, government and defence revenue accounted for just 14 percent of DWS’s revenue in FY18, but that number shot up to 35 percent in FY19. It picked up Object Consulting last week, too, promising the transaction would be accretive.

Read the full story here.

Amaysim

Revenue: $508 million (down 8%)
EBITDA: $44 million (down 9%)
Net profit: $8.75 million (down 40%)
Shares: 74 cents (down 22%)

Amaysim had a rough 2019, blaming “intense competition in the mobile market” and a highly regulated energy market. However, the telco said it had renewed its focus on the energy business, plus its new technology stack.

The company said there were early signs that the upheaval within the mobile market is set to ease with the rollout of 5G networks this year as telcos refocus on improving ARPU rather than aggressively expanding their customer bases.

Read the full story here.

Superloop

Revenue: $117 million (up 1.6%) 
EBITDA: $8.5 million (down 61.5%)
Net loss: $72 million (down from $1.3 million profit)
Shares: $1.50 (down 38%)

The network provider announced that it had exited its cloud managed services segment after declining performance. The unit was established in 2016 when Superloop acquired wireless and IT services provider BigAir.

The exit resulted in a $50.7 million impairment charge.

Read the full story here.

Arq Group

Revenue: $90.9 million (down 19.1 percent)
Net loss: $564,000 (up from $2.6 million loss)
Shares: 70 cents (down 78.8 percent)

Arq Group's revenue dived after the enterprise business slowed down, caused by “execution issues” in the Melbourne office and “unexpected” delays with some contract wins.

The SMB business, which deals with domain name registrations and renewals, web and email hosting and more, bounced back following a “challenging” second half of FY18, due to the recovery of subscription digital revenue sales.

Read the full story here.

TPG

Revenue: $2.47 billion (down 18.7%)
EBITDA: $818.4 million (down 8.3%)
Shares: $6.44 (up 24%)

TPG said it’s results were thrown off by its decision to stop rolling out its own mobile network due to the ban on Huawei core network equipment.

The telco also incurred costs from the planned merger with Vodafone Hutchison Australia, which is currently the subject of court proceedings with the ACCC.

Revenue and EBITDA declined due to margin losses related to migration of both DSL and home phone customers to the NBN.

Read the full story here.

Macquarie Telecom

Revenue: $246.6 million (up 6%)
Net profit: $16.5 million (down 3%)
Shares: $19.90 (down 2.16%)

MacTel’s performance was relatively stable in FY19, but the biggest announcement was the company’s plans to bring public cloud capability to its hybrid cloud offering.

MacTel’s hosting segment — which includes hybrid IT, data centres, security and secure cloud — was the company’s fastest growing in terms of revenue, and also saw the most investment.

Read the full story here.

Telstra

Revenue: $27.8 billion (down 3.6 percent)
EBITDA: $8 billion (down 21.7 percent)
Net profit: $2.1 billion (down 39.6 percent)
Shares: $3.85 (down 47%)

It was always going to be a rough year for Telstra as the company continues plowing through the headwinds caused by the rollout of the NBN. However, the telco said the toughest challenge imposed by the NBN is yet to come.

Telstra estimated that the NBN’s rollout led to $1.7 billion in missing EBITDA since FY16, roughly 50 percent of the overall impact. A large portion of that missing EBITDA has already been absorbed since Telstra committed to simplifying and digitising its business processes.

Read the full story here.

Dicker Data

Half-year results to 30 June 2019
Revenue: $852 million (up 18.7%)
Net profit: $23.7 million (up 50.5%)
Shares: $5.38 (up 85.52%)

The distie reported another bumper set of results, with 10 new vendors contributing $18.8 million in revenue.

Dicker’s biggest revenue source was still hardware sales and virtual services (third-party warranties), growing a combined 16.9 percent to $670.2 million, followed by software sales, up 26.4 percent to $176.5 million. Services revenue, which includes third-party logistics, configuration services and agent commissions, grew 10.2 percent to $4 million.

Read the full story here.

NextDC

Revenue: $179.3 million (up 15%)
EBITDA: $85.1 million (up 13%)
Net loss: $9.8 million (down from $6.6 million profit)
Shares: $6.49 (down 14.15%)

NextDC posted its first after-tax loss since 2016 after profitability tanked due to rising costs. Profitability was affected by higher depreciation and interest costs relating to investments over the past year.

Revenue and customer growth continued to grow however, as chief executive Craig Scroggie said the year saw “record investment” in its data centres. 

Read the full story here.