Rene Sugo (Symbio)
Australian communications provider Symbio has set itself an ambitious target of 100 million phone numbers on its network by 2030 as part of an Asia Pacific expansion plan.
The communications software and cloud infrastructure specialist is looking to increase its coverage across eight Asia Pacific countries and retain 15 per cent market share in each over the next eight years.
As of December 2021, Symbio reached 6.4 million phone numbers on its network, a rise of 26 per cent year-on-year, which led to a recurring revenue jump of 13 per cent to A$54.4 million for the first half of FY22 ending 31 December.
Net profit was up 67 per cent to A$11.1 million and earnings before tax was up seven per cent to A$17.3 million during the first half of FY22.
Meanwhile, FY22 earnings before tax guidance remained between A$35 and A$38 million for the continuing business.
The result come just months after what-was-then known as MNF Group rebranded its entire business to fall in line with the name of its subsidiary Symbio.
“Guided by a new strategy, realigned business and clear goals, we made significant progress during the first half of the 2022 financial year, recording strong growth across key metrics for the continuing business,” Symbio co-founder and CEO Rene Sugo said.
“Following the sale of part of our direct business in August 2021, we further simplified our operations to focus on wholesale revenue and the multi-billion dollar opportunity in cloud communications by divesting Express Virtual Meetings.
“Our name change to Symbio and reclassification into the software and services reflects our strategy to become a world-class software company.”
In the past year, Symbio restructured its business into three software as a service divisions as it realigns for growth.
However, investments are tracking behind due to technical resource constraints, the company told shareholders. The three software divisions are Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS), Telecom as a Service (TaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).
“While forecast investment has been impacted by labour market challenges, we are implementing strategies to diversify our talent pools in the region," Sugo said.
“We continue to gain market share in Australia and further expand in Asia Pacific with customers being on-boarded in Singapore and a robust customer pipeline. We target to break even in Singapore in June 2022.”
Sugo said it was also actively working to enter the Malaysian market and had already established a local corporate structure, expecting to go live before the end of the 2022 calendar year.
“At the same time we continue to scan the market for potential targets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,” he added.
Since launching its CPaaS product suite in Singapore last year, Symbio said 10 global software companies have signed contracts and are currently being on-boarded with more customers at various stages in the pipeline.
It will continue to target customer growth through increased investment in marketing and testing the UCaaS product suite in Singapore.
“With the simplification of our business now complete, we are focused on the significant market opportunity in cloud communications,” Sugo said. “We continue to grow our recurring revenue thanks to our unique offering and quality customers including some of the largest software companies.
“Our company is fuelled for growth with a strong balance sheet and a proven team. We are performing faster with a lean, focused business and clear vision which is already delivering progress. Our future is bigger with our goal to expand our total addressable market to over 500 million people across Asia and reach 100 million numbers on our network by 2030.”
