rhipe grows Microsoft CSP seats to 186,000

Dominic O'Hanlon - CEO, rhipe

rhipe (ASX:RHP) has posted a $88.3 million revenue for the first half of the 2018 financial year, equating to a 22 per cent increase on the same period in the previous year.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up by 300 per cent, posting $2.8 million for the half year ended 31 December 2017. Net profit after tax (NPAT) went from a $800,000 loss to $1.1 million.

According to rhipe, most of the revenue growth was in monthly subscription-based licensing revenue generated from more than 2,500 technology service provider customers across Asia Pacific.

rhipe’s  licensing  revenue  was  $85 million, up 21 per cent  year-on-year. Revenue from services and support activities was $3.3 million for the period, up 37 per cent and driven by growth in support activities. This was a result of the restructure of the business in the prior financial year and expansion of its technical support offering.

The publicly-listed cloud software distributor told shareholders on 5 February that the improvements in the company’s financial results were due to investments in the expansion of its South East Asia and South Korea operations.

It also pointed to its investment in the indirect Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) program for Office 365, and an investment in its operations to support the expansion of Microsoft Azure as helping to push up its financials.

The investments resulted in rhipe’s Licensing revenue going up 21 per cent, growth in CSP operations resulted in revenue of more than $13 million.

rhipe revealed that at 31 December 2017 it had over 186,000 CSP Office 365 seats compared to 126,000 at 30 June 2017.

The distributor invested $300,000 in the South Korea operations signing its first customers in the second quarter of FY18.

rhipe said it will continue to evaluate new geographic markets and new vendor licensing relationships with “a number of smaller complementary software vendors”.

In November, rhipe announced a partnership with Symantec to distribute the vendor’s Endpoint Protection Cloud offering to partners in Australia, New Zealand and Asia.