Managed communications and contact centre provider Azzurri released its FY11 results earlier this week. We spoke to CEO Vim Vithaldas about the results and, more importantly, the recent performance and outlook for the business.
Privately-held Azzurri saw revenue drop by 8% in the year to June 2011. Its EBITDA fell by 17%, taking its EBITDA margin down to 9.2%, compared to 10.3% in FY10.
Clearly these numbers aren’t great, but they are hardly a surprise. Azzurri has been through a lot of necessary change since the period in question closed (which was of course almost 11 months ago!). With a refinancing deal and a new CEO, the business has essentially been re-booted and given another shot (see All change at Azzurri).
So how is it faring? Well Vithaldas tells us that H1 of the current financial year was something of a disappointment. But in the second half, with its financing secured, the company has, in his words, “turned a corner”. He expects to see both sequential and year-on-year growth for H2 (which runs to end June).
So, apart from management changes and a more secure financial position, what has changed? It’s not the data, voice and mobile markets in which Azzurri plays - from everything we hear, new spend remains tough to find. Rather, Vithaldas points to improvements in its core service platform (now branded as ICON - Intelligent Cloud Optimised Network) and more cross-selling between its different service areas, with clients increasingly taking more than one service tower.
This underlines an interesting distinction between the upper mid-market, where Azzurri plays, and the larger corporate space. Whereas existing outsourcing deals are being broken up by the biggest clients, in the mid-market a push for consolidation of voice and data services is helping to drive new opportunities for suppliers like Azzurri.
Whether a business that has been through so much uncertainty in recent years can keep improving its performance in the period ahead remains to be seen. But Azzurri does appear to be in better shape than at this time last year.