Tech reviews

Macquarie Telecom soars past $1b in blockbuster year


“The telecom business is still a great business, it talks to our purpose and is a channel to sell our cloud products into the business market. They all work quite nicely together…. [but] we’ve invested heavily into cloud.

“What is driving it all is the megatrend of hybrid cloud and different types of cloud, plus cyber security.”

In contrast, in 2017 the telecom business made up more than 63 per cent of the company’s revenue and 46 per cent of its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

One of the strongest drivers of Macquarie’s 2020 share price growth and its future revenue growth has been its success in the ever-growing data centre market.

In June it said it was building a new Canberra government data centre on increased demand for its services. Earlier this month it also announced one of its biggest contract wins to date, securing a 10 megawatts (MW) contract for its second Maquarie Park data centre, which was only slated for 11MW of capacity.

This new deal triggered the business to up its capital expenditure for the 2021 financial year from $140 million to between $180 million and $200 million.

Mr Tudehope said the contract was so large it now hopes to expand the total capacity of the centre beyond 11MW.

“It’s on a large five-acre block, so we have plenty of scope,” he said.

“We’re very consistent in our strategy and that’s continuing in the year ahead. We’ll continue to invest in more people and technology and we have quite ambitious plans to grow the cyber business.

“We’re an example of an Australian start-up 27-years-ago, which has now hit scale. The importance of that is we’re not just creating jobs, but jobs of the future. We made some good choices in our strategy, we have momentum and we can bring in more Australians and make more investments.”

The Tudehope brothers still own more than 54 per cent of the business via their company, Claiward, valuing their stake at almost $600 million.

Other big shareholders in the business include Viburnum Funds, Australian Ethical and Mirrabooka Investments.

Since March, Macquarie has performed in line with WiseTech and outperformed other big tech names such as Appen, Altium, Xero and fellow data centre player NEXTDC.

Macquarie Telecom listed on the ASX in 1999 and shortly after built the first independent data centre in Sydney. The business has already weathered numerous financial crises, as well as shifts in technology trends.

Its this ability to spot tech trends which has Mr Tudehope confident that the company’s best days are still ahead of it.

His next pick for the future growth engine of Macquarie is cyber security.

“The first data centre in Sydney… came out of us looking at what was happening in overseas markets. We knew there would be a move from data being stored in company’s owner servers into third party data centres,” he said.

“We’ve moved on trends we thought resonated with our customer base. We’re investing in cyber security. It’s been part of the business for many years… but clients are maturing from being focused on buying hardware and software for cyber to buying cyber security as a service.

“There’s an opportunity for us and other providers to say ‘pay us to manage it all and we’ll get the results for you’. It’s very hard to get these cyber security skills these days and who wants to sit up and monitor it 24/7?”

For now, one of the longest-serving CEOs of an ASX-listed company says he has no intentions of retiring.

“If the industry didn’t change so much you’d get to a point where you’d say ‘I’m good’, but because it’s always changing so much, the challenge of adapting is still there. It’s the forward-looking piece that keeps you energised.”



READ SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.