Xero cracks quarter-million customers

Xero cracks quarter-million customers

By Paul McBeth

Feb. 20 (BusinessDesk) - Xero, the cloud accounting software developer, reached a quarter of a million customers at the end of January, almost doubling its paying clients from the same time a year ago.

The Wellington-based company attracted its 250,000th customer in January, adding 50,000 customers since August, and taking it a quarter of the way to its target of one million clients. That implies Xero has annualised recurring revenue of $83.5 million, based on its last published revenue figure of $70.6 million as at Sept. 30.

The company has previously said it was on track to boost annual revenue by more than 80 percent, which would take sales beyond $70.2 million for the year ending March 31 from $39 million a year earlier.

“Now with a quarter of a million customers globally, and with the Australian market fast approaching 100,000 customers, we are gaining real momentum,” chief executive Rod Drury said in a statement ahead of the company’s annual conference, in Auckland. “The results we have achieved over the last year are testament to the innovation of the product development team, which is working hard to build the features enabling us to target all small businesses in our core markets, as well as the wider teams in US, Australia, the UK and here in New Zealand.”

Last week Xero appointed former Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell as its new chairman and ex-PayPal executive Peter Karpas to lead its North American unit. US-based Bill Veghte, who runs HP’s enterprise group, has also been appointed to the company’s board.

The shares were last at $39.60, and have climbed 23 percent this year.

(BusinessDesk)

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