Cloud accounting software firm Xero has announced plans to delist from the New Zealand Stock Exchange and consolidate its shares on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Xero will cease trading on the NZX on 31 January 2018, and will be delisted from the exchange two days later. All Xero shares listed on the NZX will be automatically transferred to the ASX.
Chief executive Rod Drury said the decision came after an extensive strategic process to weigh up the company's options, noting that 80 percent of Xero's revenue comes from outside New Zealand. Xero will remain headquartered in Wellington, given more than half of its staff are based in New Zealand.
"Our strategy is to drive further growth in markets like UK, North America and Southeast Asia," Drury said. "As Xero continues to grow, gaining enhanced access to deeper capital markets, increased liquidity and a broader base of potential investors is critical to fulfilling our ambition to be the leading global small business platform serving millions of customers.”
The company also announced that net subscribers had increased by 160,000 in half-year period ending 30 September 2017, bringing the total subscriber base to 1,199,000. Australia remains the largest market in terms of subscribers with 518,000, followed by New Zealand with 271,000 and the UK with 253,000. North America accounts for 110,000 subscribers.
Revenue for the first half of FY18 was up 37 percent to $187.8 million, and earnings of $5.4 million, compared to negative earnings of $25.9 million during the same period last financial year. Xero also reported a net loss of $21.1 million, an improvement from the $43.9 million loss last half-year.
In September, Xero revealed that it migrated its internal IT environment to Microsoft Azure, despite the highly publicised customer migration to cloud rival Amazon Web Services last year, which saw 700,000 customers, 59 billion records, 3000 apps and 120 databases shifted to the cloud.
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