Empired ups revenue expectations; full steam ahead for FY16

Empired has upgraded its revenue expectations for 2015 and 2016 on the back of contract success and rapid expansion across the east coast of Australia and New Zealand.

Russell Baskerville, Empired managing director, says the IT services provider's increased scale and breadth of services positions it strongly to secure major new contracts in all regions.

"We have secured multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts in Singapore, both the West and East coast of Australia and in New Zealand," Baskerville says.

"These contracts are all annuity based managed services contracts that provide an exceptional platform for further growth into FY16 and enhance the defensible nature of our business model and revenue predicatability.

Empired has signed $65 million in new deals recently and says the guidance upgrade follows 'a period of pleasing performance from our acquisitions, strong organic growth and recent contract success'.

The company is now expecting 2015 revenue to be in the range of $120 million to $130 million, up from early guidance of $110 million to $120 million. Empired says it is confident of being in the upper end of its guidance range for 2015.

Financial year 2016 reported revenue is expected to be around $155 million to $175 million, up from the previously expected $145 million to $165 million.

Empired says it has hired about 100 new staff, which while providing 'a degree of confidence in our strategy and delivering into the FY16 year' has affected gross margins and expenses.

The additional staff mean Empired will move into the 2016 financial year with 900 staff, up about 430 from the start of this financial year.

The $65 million in new contracts announced over the past few months were part of a total qualified pipeline of $100 million in large strategic contracts to be awarded by 30 June, 2015.

"Empired is delighted to confirm that all contracts that were included in the $100 million pipeline have now been awarded and that Empired has secured $65 million in contracts of the $100 million that were contested.

The company says the wins all represent new business, have a high proportion of contracted recurring revenue, and include a range of enhancement services.

Those deals include the $12 million, six year contract to provide New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industry with Empired's Cohesion cloud-based records management system and a deal with Toyota.

More recent wins include the $15 million, five-year InterOil infrastructure and application managed services deal, a three-year, $10 million infrastructure managed services deal with an unnamed global oil and gas organisation, and a $20 million, five year contract with Rio Tinto for application managed services.

Baskerville says the company is focused on continuing to build its pipeline of major strategic contracts and is expecting a high level of new contract success into the FY16 years.

"We are confident in continuing to deliver on our track record of organic and acquisitive growth.