Andrew Colley | August 20, 2008
AUSTRALIAN mobile credit software specialist eServGlobal says it can achieve earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin of 20 per cent by 2011 after reporting a record profit.
eServGlobal, which makes software that currently processes $US4 billion ($4.5 billion) worth of mobile phone transactions around the world each month, today reported a 91 per cent year-on-year increase in after tax profit of $10.4 million for the year to June 30.
eServGlobal executive chairman Ian Buddery said the company hoped to increase the value of transactions processed by its software ten-fold to $US40 billion within five years.
"The business plan we work to is to increase our revenue by 15 per cent per year while decreasing our costs by around 12 per cent per year so that gradually we're improving our margin by somewhere in the order of 2 per cent a year.
"We have a view that we can achieve a 20 per cent EBITDA margin (in three years) which is about the industry standard for our software," Mr Buddery said.
eServGlobal sales increased 15.9 per cent to reach $177.9 million in the year to June 2008 compared with the previous corresponding period.
Mr Buddery said the company's investment in research and development would increase marginally over the coming year from $25 million to around $26 million and be focused on improving its mobile payments platform.
Currently the company's strategy remains fixed on increasing market share in developing countries with a focus on Latin America and the Middle East where mobile subscription rates are growing at rapid rates.
Mobile payments was one of the most promising growth opportunities in the Middle East where mobile handsets were expected to provide basic financial services for large populations of migrant workers that can't get access to conventional bank accounts, he said.
Mr Buddery ruled out China as an attractive target market. He said that it was too difficult to generate returns in the region due to commercial barriers created by close ties between government and regulators.
He also said that the company had experienced difficulty "protecting" its software citing China's poor performance in intellectual property protection regulation.