“In March we brought together our three initial organisations under the Pulsant brand, followed by the acquisition of Scolocate in December. We now have 10 data centres throughout the UK, offering our “Triple-A” service model to 3,000 mid-tier and enterprise customers. During this time we have brought true next-generation cloud computing capability to market, this is beginning to see very strong revenue growth. We predict cloud will become an ever more significant revenue stream as more and more companies recognise the benefits of hosting services in the cloud to support mobility, drive performance and offer greater scalability.”
Howling added: “The industry continues to face a tough economic outlook, but Pulsant is weathering the storm well with our continued focus on customer service. This is clear from our 95 per cent customer retention rate and the fact Pulsant is the only IT hosting company to have been awarded the Royal Warrant, demonstrating the quality and excellence of the cloud, colocation and managed networking services we provide.”
Financial highlights for the financial year ending 31 December 2012:
•Revenues: rose in headline terms by 51 per cent to £30.43 million from £20.2million on 31 December 2011. EBITDA before exceptional items was £10.08 million, an increase of 41 per cent from £7.16 million in 2011. Colocation accounted for 59 per cent of revenues, hosting/cloud services for 28 per cent and managed networks for the remaining 13 per cent
•Cash flow: £11.9m of operating cash flow (or 118 per cent of EBITDA) up from £3.27 million for the 15 months to 31 December 2011
•Profits: Gross profit of £13.6m, operating profit was £2.1m
•Losses: £3.87 million before tax, £5.07 million after tax
•Expenditure: Capex accounted for £7.7m of outgoings, while there was a £9.8m cash consideration for Scolocate, £1.8m of deferred consideration, £1.7m of cash interest and £0.6m of tax
•Funding: Pulsant received £12.3m of new funding, of which £8.3m was investor loan notes
•Debt: Pulsant ended FY 2012 with gross debt of £84.1m (£42.6m loan notes and £40.9m of bank loans) and net debt of £75.2m
•FY2012 is the first full year since the acquisition of Lumison, DediPower and BlueSquare Data
•Scolocate, acquired by Pulsant in December 2012, will add £8.5m in revenues and £2.7m in EBITDA