Inabox announces AU$1.4 million profit drop on back of Anittel purchase

Inabox has released its financial results for the year ending June 2015, reporting a net loss of AU$351,000, down 132 percent year over year from the AU$1.068 million in profit announced last year.

Operating revenue was AU$64.328 million for the year, up 37.1 percent year on year from the AU$46.910 million reported during the same period last year, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 22 percent, from AU$2.413 million last year down to AU$1.877 million in FY15.

The wholesale telecommunications and cloud services provider on Friday attributed its profit loss to the AU$9.88 million acquisition of rival Anittel in November last year, while it said its rise in revenue was due to Anittel's business being incorporated in the final six months of the year, from January to June. According to Inabox, excluding the money spent on the purchase, underlying EBITDA had increased by 5 percent.

The company has three core businesses: Enablement, which provides mass market telco services for retailers to sell to consumers; Indirect, which provides wholesale telco services; and Direct, which provides managed IT and cloud solutions. Each business contributed AU$1.978 million, AU$44.98 million, and AU$17.3 million, respectively, in revenue over the year.

Enablement added 30,000 customers and Direct added 1,000 customers, while the company said its Indirect business had added "a significant number of new retail service providers".

Net operating cash flow was AU$3.162 million, up 88.8 percent from last year's AU$1.675 million, and net assets totalled AU$10.21 million as of the end of June 2015, up 219.6 percent from AU$4.65 million last year thanks to the company's acquisitions.

Last July, Inabox purchased Queensland VoIP and cloud services provider Neural Networks Data Services for AU$350,000. Inabox said on Friday that this acquisition had "exceeded short-term expectations in its first year and expanded Inabox's IP voice and cloud capabilities".

Inabox's purchases of Anittel and Neural Networks also affected its half-yearly profits, announced in March, with a 21.1 percent drop in net profit from the AU$471,344 posted last year to the AU$371,843 reported for the six months ending December 2014.

The wholesale telco provider had also restructured as a result of the Anittel deal, announcing an unknown number of redundancies in March.

"The roles are across both Anittel and the original business; across the whole organisation," Inabox Group CEO and managing director Damian Kay told ZDNet at the time.

"A number of different roles that were duplicated will be included, such as heads of product and general roles across the organisation.

"There are a substantial number of people that have been notified. But we've created more roles than we've made redundant."

Inabox said in its results report on Friday that this restructure is projected to save AU$3 million annually, with AU$1 million of this to be used to add new staff members.

It projected EBITDA of AU$5 million for FY16 -- an increase of 160 percent -- off the back of growth in its three core businesses after its acquisitions. It also pointed to Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) sparking interest in wholesale solutions from large retail brands.

"Inabox is well positioned to win and support large brands with its end-to-end offering and strong implementation and operations track record. Enablement aims to grow the number of supported services to more than 80,000 by the end of FY16," the company said.

In May, Inabox announced that it had secured contracts with 12 new customers in the past year, which it said would translate into AU$4.25 million in revenue over the next three years.

"Growth in these businesses, combined with AU$2 million of annualised cost savings, are expected to result in EBITDA of at least AU$5 million for FY16," the company said.

In June, it similarly signed a three-year deal with Total Telecoms worth AU$3.6 million to move 3,000 customers' public switched telephone network (PSTN) services migrate to Inabox's wholesale aggregation solution.

"Total Telecoms' decision to move to Inabox demonstrates we are flexible enough to accommodate the specific requirements from retail service providers in the market regardless of size," Kay said at the time.

"We have been very aggressive in the wholesale space, and it is starting to pay off."