NextDC bounces back to $9.1 million profit

NextDC has bounced back to profit after tax after a year of accelerating demand for cloud computing and digitisation. 

The ASX-100 listed, Brisbane-headquartered colocation provider posted a $9.1 million profit after tax for the year ended 30 June 2022, up from a $23.6 million loss the year before. Its data centre services revenue rose 18 percent to $291 million. 

The company added 106 customers during the financial year, bringing its total number of customers to 1,613.  Contracted utilisation increased by 10 percent.

“In a high-inflation and supply constrained economic environment, the continued performance of NEXTDC’s leading national portfolio of premium data centres reinforces the highly resilient nature of the company’s digital infrastructure assets,” stated NextDC chief executive officer and managing director Craig Scroggie.

NextDC spent big on those assets in FY 2022, pouring $604.8 million into capital, including its first data centre in Darwin and Adelaide, its national Sovereign Bridge, launched with infrastructure-as-a-service provider AUCloud which it purchased a 20 percent stake in at the end of last year for $17 million.

The investments positioned NextDC to “capture the benefits of prevailing industry tailwinds driven by the growth in cloud computing and accelerated digitisation,” according to Scroggie.

The company reported more than 750 partnerships with cloud platforms, as-a-service providers, independent software vendors, advisory firms and telecommunications carriers.

”Our partner ecosystem is one of the largest independent network of IT service providers, carriers and cloud providers in Australia,” the company stated. “Because we’re vendor‑neutral, our customers have the flexibility to source and connect to a much wider range of providers.”

NextDC counts 15 percent of its customs as system integrators. Its services provider partners include NTT Group, Atos, DXC, NEC, IBM, Logicalis, Data#3, Interactive, Infosys and Wipro. Its technology advisory partners include Accenture and Deloitte, specialist cloud and managed service partners include Netskope, Iron Mountain, Over the Wire, AUCloud, Blue Connections, Nexthop, ZettaNet, Teradata, Cloud Plus and Somerville Group.