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Telecommunications Commander heads for $1b plus turnover in FY2007
Telecommunications Commander heads for $1b plus turnover in FY2007 | Commander heads for $1b plus turnover in FY2007 |
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| Written by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 28 August 2006 | |
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For FY 2006 it reported revenues of $790 million, up 28 percent on 2005, and EBITDA of $60.1 million, exceeding guidance of $55m-$59 million and up 24 percent on FY 2005. After tax profit was $26.0 million down marginally from $28.1 million last year. Commander has declared a final dividend of four cents and a special dividend of two cents, both fully franked. The results include Volante which was acquired by Commander in April this year. Commander says that both companies achieved their individual profit objectives. It claims that Volante has been "successfully integrated into Commander's business," enabling it to launch a new managed services offering as part of its "360° solutions suite. Commander claims that the integration was "extremely successful...in HR terms" and that "operational integration is fundamentally complete." It claims that only seven of 152 Volante staff identified as having key roles have resigned since the takeover. Prior to acquiring Volante Commander had invested $5.8m in labour costs to develop its own managed services business. Since the acquisition, Commander says Volante has become its managed services vehicle, "taking carriage of existing customers, improving service levels...and the increased critical mass will reduce the costs of growing the business organically." Commander now claims to have a broader range of communications and IT offerings than any other company in Australia, spanning office and mobile telephony, IT hardware and software, Internet and network access, converged solutions, support and maintenance services, software licensing solutions, infrastructure solutions, software solutions, managed services and strategic consulting services. It also claims to have "one of the largest business-dedicated technical forces in Australia." It claim to have a "unique balance of ICT and telecommunication capability [that] positions Commander well for trends in convergence and multi-service offerings." During the year the company implemented a common CRM platform across all customer segments "to enable growth, improved customer service and optimum delivery of its products>" Commander says it has revamped its core network to support ethernet IP, IP MPLS and interconnection to third-party DSLAM rollouts for alternative last-mile connectivity to customers. It is moving towards hosted IP telephony and other hosted applications with the commissioning of BroadSoft Class 5 application platform and NetSuite to provide hosted applications for SMEs. Commander acquired Personal Broadband and is iBurst wireless access network in June 2005.It claims that this business is now "profitable on a monthly basis." iBurst is presently available in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and the Gold Coast, and Commander says it will be in seven major cities by the end of the financial year. Commander is also planning further acquisitions. It refinanced its debt facility on 30 June 2006 through a syndicated facilities agreement for $340m with the Commonwealth, National Australia and Westpac banks, and noted that "As at 30 June 2006, the facility was drawn to $205.6m ... providing headroom to continue Commander's acquisition programme."
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