Sunday, February 01, 2009

8x8 3Q Numbers

Paclt 8 had a big presence at the IT Expo in Miami. 8x8 had just announced its favorable quarterly earnings report. B2B is now 66% of revenue, even though they bought quite a few B2C customers from SunRocket and other demised ITSP's since July of 2007.

Revenues for Q3 FY 2009 were $16.2 million, compared to $15.8 million for the same period last year and $16.4 million for the previous quarter.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • GAAP income for the quarter was $180,000 [on $16M in revenue!?]
  • 8x8's customer base up by net 962 new customers
  • the company now provides service to 14,706 business customers.
  • business churn is down to 2.9%
  • direct sales accounted for 84% of new business sales during the quarter
  • quota-carrying direct sales force grew from 43 to 56 agents;
  • Expanded indirect channel network to include more than 30 resellers and VARs

Besides the $100k net from $16.2M, here's another oxymoron:

"Successfully transitioned approximately 1,000 former business customers and a unified communications technology platform from Avtex, LLC to the 8x8 Virtual Office network."

Yet only netted 962 customers and 84% new came in from direct sales? It doesn't pass the sniff test.

Huw Rees, the VP of Sales & Marketing, was on a panel with a guy from Magic Jack (along with Broadvox, TW Telecom, Telefonica, Iphonex). Mainly it was whining about the ILEC's charge too much for stuff and the ILECs are inefficient. Someone did finally note that if the ILEC's were efficient, everyone on that panel except for the fiber T companies (TWT and Telefonica) would be out of business. Rees also noted that he didn't want to collect / pay taxes. "It's over the Internet. It should be free of taxes," was his reply to my question. There's never been a long standing model of "We will provide it cheaper to you." It only lasts for a finite time, before the model blows up.

BTW, Magic Jack was talking about costs especially of customer support when he was questioned by Thomas Howe, who asked him for the tech support number. The MJ guy said that it was on the customer credit card statement. Nice. 23 days after you buy it, you get some useful info in a place you wouldn't think to look. He hinted that the new GSM chip in these devices (that supposedly i2 telecom owns the patent on) would geo-locate the user for 911 purposes via tower triangulation. I'm wondering how much info and tracking that MJ device is doing. Anyway... see ya soon.

Info from various sources including VoIP-News and SEC filings.

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