Logistics IT firm records 1,371 per cent rise in profits
The initial shareholders in IT firm WiseTech Global have seen their faith rewarded with annual net profits rising from $2.2 million to $31.9 million.
The 1,371 per cent bumper return came on the back of a 50 per cent rise in revenues from $102.8 million to $153.8 million, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) also soaring.
“Our global business continues to deliver high-quality growth with revenues up 49 per cent to $153.8m and EBITDA up 71 per cent to $53.9m while we continued to focus on executing significant strategic actions to drive future revenue growth and global expansion,” CEO Richard White says.
The growth “has been fuelled by significant growth in revenue from existing customers across transactions, modules and geographies and new sales worldwide, further accelerated by our targeted acquisitions”.
The company’s momentum and 99 per cent recurrent revenues spur White to forecast a 30-37 per cent rise in revenue for this time next year.
The results have seen WiseTech’s share price rise from $6.96 to $7.62.
The company emphasises the heavy investment in research and development (R&D), saying half its personnel is in product development, while it has invested $167 million in R&D.
This has delivered more than 680 product upgrades and enhancements seamlessly across the CargoWise One global platform.
“These hundreds of upgrades include initiatives such as global container tracking, automations in supply chain security for air cargo screening to reduce risks at the border and in the air, WiseRates rating and pricing automation engine, integrations in shipping port and cartage, carrier connectivity electronic booking and global address validation and master deduplication to ensure compliance and prevent futile trips, risks and fines,” the company says.
This has led to internal developments as well as the Universal Customs Engine which is designed to deliver complex, multi-year customs localisation projects in a fraction of the time and which is accelerating the pace of integration of the customs solutions businesses we are acquiring in key regions.
Its Productivity Acceleration and Visualisation Engine (PAVE), is nearing completion and is in the process of commercialising, having delivered significant productivity improvements in development partner tests. We expect this to be rolled out across the global platform later in FY18.
“We have added to our considerable pipeline of development initiatives by investing research and development resources into machine learning, natural language processing, robotic process automation and guided decision support, driven by vast volumes of transactional and border agency data sets to enable enhanced compliance, due diligence, risk assessment and risk mitigation,” the company says.
It has also gained global acceptance amongst third-party logistics providers, saying 32 of the top 50 global 3PLs are now customers while it has also gained in small to medium segment of that market, naming Morrison, Clasquin and Allport Cargo Services.
“We continued our global rollout programmes with the world’s largest global forwarding groups, including DSV, Geodis/OHL, Yusen, Mainfreight, DHL GF and JAS which are in various stages of global rollout for the freight forwarding module,” WiseTech says.
The firm’s full and share acquisitions and of comparable firms continued with seven through the year.
Just last week it said it would gain full ownership of German global ocean carrier logistics solution provider Softship.
A week earlier it announced the acquisition of Australian land transport provider CMS Transport Systems, Australasian customs-broking focused tariff research and compliance tools firm Digerati and Taiwan customs and forwarding compliance solutions company Prolink.
In July it nabbed Brazillian customs solution provider Bysoft.