Victor Tsaccounis (Hubify)
Telco and IT managed services provider (MSP) Hubify has taken a hit to its bottom line during its first half year of FY22, with statutory post-tax profitability down 78.4 per cent year-on-year, to $140,000, as it handles the ongoing pandemic and gears up to take on new managed services opportunities.
This is considerably down for the same period last year, which was $650,000 – which in turn represented a decline of 67.5 per cent on the financial year prior.
According to the company, the hit to its profitability is partly due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as it continued to support its employees during difficult labour market conditions with reduced support from the government.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was also down 64.5 per cent to $430,000 in the red.
This decline, according to its financial report for the half-year, was due to the decision to invest in additional headcount and capability over the six months to 31 December to act on an “increasingly strong sales pipeline” as well as new managed services enterprise customer contracts.
Hubify CEO Victor Tsaccounis said the first half of the 2022 financial year was “transformational” due to the establishment of its managed service practice.
This follows the business winning an agreement with Optus to supply the telco’s Enterprise division's customers with IT services back in October 2021.
"Hubify successfully recruited technical and project management staff to fulfil the immediate increase in services necessary to manage the growth in the managed services division,” he said.
“In just over six months we now have over 50 additional employees to deliver IT and telco solutions to our clients and have the capability to successfully manage the IT and technology needs for large enterprise customers.
“This capability will fuel organic growth in our voice and data business as we continue to move up the food chain and grow revenue in the enterprise segment. We continue to find our niche in this section of the market and are focused on developing the capability of the organisation to meet strong customer demand."
“In summary, we expect strong organic growth to continue across all of our business divisions and continue to actively explore acquisition opportunities in the telco/MSP sector and look forward to updating the market as the acquisition pipeline materialises,” he added.
Meanwhile, revenue was up 28.8 per cent compared to the same period last year, to $11.5 million. Additionally, total organic growth was up 16 per cent, which, according to the company, and was led by strong demand from its managed services business and solid growth across telco divisions.
Despite increasing, Hubify said revenue was also impacted by the pandemic, which affected the provisioning and billing of clients, sales calls to customer prospects and new client on-boarding.
Looking ahead to the end of the financial year, Hubify claimed that as Australian businesses return to the office, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) and enterprises are responding to pent up consumer demand in mobility, voice and internet and networks.
In fact, the company expects these sectors to make up an “important tailwind” for the rest of the financial year.
