Saturday, June 27. 2009It's Been More Than A Very Good Year.....John Linton ......it's been a landmark year in which Exetel began to 'grow up'. Last weekend of this financial year and therefore that means......... the new year is only a few days away. The FY2009 figures, with only two working days to go, show a very, very good year for Exetel in every aspect of the business with revenue up around $A10 million on the previous year which is around a 28% increase which is in line with a 27% increase in customer numbers and a slightly larger increase in our small net profit of a little over 30%....though as we make very little profit that is not really meaningful and in any event it really isn't possible to estimate profits accurately until the accountants do their thing. So....a very good year in almost any way you look at it financially. In our accountant's words - "they are going to be a very pretty set of numbers - ones you can be very proud of".....and undoubtedly we will be at the appropriate time. Apart from the figures we did a few quite major things over the past twelve months in terms of both the current operations but far more importantly for the near and medium term future of which we are probably more "proud" and indicate that Exetel became a very different company over the past twelve months....perhaps an inevitability as we entered our 'second five years'. We opened a company in Sri Lanka to take over most of the back end processes of the Australian company and that has gone quite well; in many ways better than we had expected. It sounds a simple enough thing to do - open a company in a different country, hire people, transfer knowledge, organise complex telephone and data systems interfaces and......the list is actually quite long. For a tiny company like Exetel to do this while it's very scarce 'management resources' were more than fully occupied in running a growing business in Australia, in hindsight, was quite remarkable....as the Australian High Commission reminded us quite recently...."no-one has been able to cope with the various challenges (governmental, fiduciary, banking, regulatory, legal, real estate, recruiting, managerial, environmental) of establishing a new company so quickly and so successfully as Exetel has managed to do in Sri Lanka" - and without any previous experience and with zero knowledge of third world scenarios generally and with ones with active civil wars particularly. So now we have a new operation in a new country which is an awkward travel time/itinerary away from most of our other operations but we have managed, somehow, to move almost half our operations there and deliver acceptable, for this time of its life, results across a wide range of activities. Of course, we have a very long way to go to achieve all of our objectives. Another thing we managed to accomplish, which also took a lot of time when it's all added up, was after looking and dilly dallying for the best part of 18 months we finally selected, purchased, fitted out and then seamlessly moved into our own premises. It doesn't sound like much of a thing to do - other companies do it all the time but it was a big deal for us and, again, we had to fit it in to a work schedule that was already fairly demanding. We had never bought commercial property before and, apart from our personal home, had never made an expenditure this large before, so even that was a new negotiating experience for us. However, as with setting up the office in Sri Lanka, the benefits are all in the future including the concept of freeing ourselves from the business rental mentality and further reducing our dependencies on outside influences and further conservatively positioning the company in terms of debt obligations and other people's, sometimes irrational, behaviour. By providing ourselves with our own data centre we will also further reduce our operating costs expenditure on rented co-location space over the coming 12 -18 months but, probably most importantly, we have taught ourselves to base future space acquisition, should that ever be necessary, on purchase instead of renting. It is a difficult step to take but one, once taken, again changes things for the better. A third major change we are still in the process of making (and I suppose, when you think about it, will continue on for a long while if we continue to grow) was to change our network topography from the centralised 'hub' design we had used for the first five years to a mostly decentralised design involving us in completing the roll out of PoPs in all State capital cities plus Canberra and to then not only link them to the main overseas feeds in Sydney but add direct connect IP feed in each separate location and also add direct customer feeds to the local State capital city Exetel PoP rather than using our carrier's inter-State trunking. This obviously required more hardware in each location and the provision of redundancy in each location. With the exception of Hobart (which is in the process of being provisioned right now) and some of the additional links we pretty much accomplished that over the past twelve months. Of course, it's an endless process but we made major strides over the past year and also significantly increased both the scale of routing and switching power deployed and the amount of bandwidth linking those resources. As with the previous two projects the benefits of this work, and expense saving, lie almost entirely in the future. I could go on with other major projects we completed during the past twelve months - after almost three years of looking we began offering data over wireless; we have hired the first eight trainees to build a corporate sales force; we designed and deployed our own VoIP 'PABX' with all the implications that has for the future; we appointed a CFO and CIO promoting two of the people who joined Exetel in quite junior positions within our first few months of operation - the past year has many, many significant achievements and events that the, albeit pleasing figures, can't begin to show. A really great year in terms of Exetel's maturing, strengthening and future positioning as well as great financials for the almost completed year. But, again, before the current year is finished we have to finalise the planning for and then begin to make a whole lot of even more difficult things happen over the coming twelve months . We will hold a small celebration in both Sydney and Colombo in early July and then we will have to make some even more difficult things happen - and, in most ways, it will be almost a mirror image of the main challenges we planned and then executed in FY2009: - Decide whether to set up a new company in another country even further away - probably the UK - Buy another 'building' to cater for further growth if our corporate sales force plans work out as well as they currently look - Further develop our network to a new level of 10 gbps switching from its current 1 gbps design and decide whether to open our own direct connect to the West coast of the USA .......as well as planning to grow the Australian and Sri Lankan businesses at a faster rate than we achieved in FY2009. So the reward you get for putting in a huge and sustained effort over each of 365 days of the past twelve months?...... ......you get to do it all over again with higher targets and a greater degree of difficulty. (and before you get to feel too sorry for yourself you have to agree it's better than the alternative of failing in the previous year and being out of a job or the company not existing at all; perhaps after 4 years of no salary increase I can get an increase on my $A120,000 a year total remuneration?...maybe Annette and Steve can too (same salary - same time since an increase)?......then again....times are still tough and profits are still very, very small so clearly we haven't done a good enough job that is worthy of an increase). Trackbacks
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Congratulations on meeting such dynamic targets and goals, but also the fortitude to approach yet another year of the same with such enthusiasm.
It has been a pleasure to observe for some time now. Good luck for the coming year(s) And enjoy the pay increase, if it happens. Raise a glass of the best, you guys deserve it. Comment (1)
Congratulations on a successful 2008/09!
Each morning I look forward to reading your blog and getting a little more insight into your business (and other matters!). Little did I know when I got my first Exetel account that I would also get this interesting opportunity to follow the ruminations of one of the owners of my ISP! I can't wait to see what you get up to in 2009/10. All the best! Harry. Comment (1)
Allow me to add my congratulations to the Exetel family for another fantastic year. With so many companies struggling and, in the case of my former employer, retrenching so many staff (including me !!) it is gratifying to see a company doing so well and expanding.
Hope the next FY brings more of the same. Jon Comment (1)
Thank you - good luck with finding a more appreciative employer.
Comments (5)
Great work, John.
To me, Exetel really seems like it's the ISP equivalent of open source software. It's really close to the community, through such things as this blog, it aims to deliver a quality product for the benefit of the customers, not just to make money, and it's generally awesome. For the last few weeks since I discovered your blog, I too have been checking it every day, eagerly awaiting the next entry. I know that I won't be changing my ISP for at least another 10 years (: -Jacob Godbout Comment (1)
Congratulations to all.
John, we are similar ages and although I consider that I keep myself reasonably fit I doubt that I could have kept up with you through the year. You and your team have my admiration. I wont say good luck since that obviously has little to do with it. cheers Comment (1)
ohhhhhhhh
give yourselves a pay rise. u have earned it. enjoy the success Comment (1)
Let's hope we can continue to do all the right things to earn such loyaly.
Comments (5)
Thank you - I'd swap fitness for my chronic unfitness any day.
Comments (5)
Exetel - the Open-Source ISP. Yes it definitely has a good ring to it. And is a very good description (not 100% accurate but pretty close!).
Congrats on the last 5 years and best wishes for many more "5 years" in the future. Comment (1)
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