Vocus grows revenue on fibre and datacentre gains

Australian dark fibre and datacentre provider Vocus Communications has announced its results for the financial year ending June 30, 2013, with an underlying net profit after tax (NPAT) of AU$8.7 million; up 3.5 percent from AU$8.4 million last year.

Its revenue was up 47.8 percent to AU$66.9 million, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) was up 35.7 percent from AU$16.7 million to AU$22.6 million. The statutory NPAT, however, was down 34.4 percent, from AU$7.8 million to AU$5.1 million, due to the effects of foreign exchange and the falling Australian dollar.

Services delivered on Vocus Fibre also rose by 243 percent over the year earlier, with 651 buildings connected to the fibre.

With datacentres and fibre contributing 71 percent of Vocus' FY13 growth in revenue, its plans for the next year focus on the launch of a new datacentre facility in Auckland, which is due to open in Q1 2014, as well as one in Melbourne's CBD.

At the Communications Day Wholesale and Datacentre Summit in Sydney in July, Vocus CEO James Spenceley announced the launch of its second Melbourne datacentre, which is due to take place next month.

"We'll be live in September 2013 in 530 Collins Street, which is the old ASX [Australian Securities Exchange] datacentre. We've completely gutted it and refurbished it," Spenceley said at the time.

"It's right in the CBD, it's incredibly well lit in terms of fibre, and I think it gives great diversity as a second [point of presence]."

Vocus houses datacentres in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Newcastle, and Perth, with plans to also raise one in Wollongong, on Sydney's south coast.

"We think there are a lot of clients in Newcastle or Wollongong with a lot of head offices or branches," he said last month.

The company signed an AU$9.8 million agreement to purchase Ipera Communications, a Newcastle-based datacentre and fibre provider, in December last year.

In September 2012, Vocus also quadrupled its capacity on the Southern Cross subsea cable between Australia, the US, and New Zealand.