WANdisco losses widen as it moves to 'growth phase'

(Sharecast News) - Data specialist WANdisco reported revenue of $10.5m (£7.56m) in 2020 on Wednesday, down from $16.2m year-on-year, as its cash overheads rose to $36.9m from $31.7m.
The AIM-traded firm's adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $22.2m for the year ended 31 December, from $11.7m in 2019, while its statutory loss from operations grew to $34.3m from $28.3m.

Cash at year-end totalled $21m, down from $23.4m a year earlier, while its debt at 31 December narrowed to $0.6m from $2.2m at the end of the prior year.

On the operational front, WANdisco completed the go-to-market launch of its 'LiveData' platform for the Microsoft Azure cloud service in the fourth quarter, and also launched its 'LiveData Migrator' product for Amazon Web Services (AWS), achieving 'Migration Competency' status in the third quarter.

The board described a 'landmark success' with its launch customer, web domain and hosting giant GoDaddy, migrating 500 terabytes of live data with 21,000 change operations per second.

During the year, it also expanded its partnerships with data analytics platforms Databricks and Snowflake, addressing the "growing opportunity" to support machine learning and artificial intelligence in the cloud.

Since the year ended, the firm announced a partnership with Snowflake to "automate, accelerate and simplify" the migration of on-premises 'Hadoop' analytics workloads to Snowflake's data platform.

The company said that in 2021 it was moving towards a consumption-based revenue model, noting that with metered billing on Azure, revenue was shifting from a subscription model in which revenue was recognised up front, to a consumption-based model where revenue would be recognised over time.

With the launch of LiveData Migrator on AWS and the LiveData platform on Azure in 2020, WANdisco said 2021 would mark the beginning of "the growth phase" for the company.

It said "significant" commercial progress was being made with Microsoft Azure and AWS partnerships, and expanding ties with system integrators.

That, the board said, underpinned its confidence in the firm's target to deliver at least $35m in revenues for 2021, targeting the migration of more than 100 petabytes of data on Azure and at least 30 petabytes on AWS.

"WANdisco is uniquely positioned to enable the next generation of machine learning and artificial intelligence in the cloud," said chief executive officer David Richards.

"Our partnerships with the major cloud vendors and solutions like Databricks and Snowflake provides a growing opportunity to become integral to the entire lifecycle of analytical data."

Richards said that in 2021, the business would be focussed on accelerating the conversion of the 200-to-300 exabyte cloud migration market identified by Microsoft, by continuing to expand its partner relationships and delivering on its pipeline.

"WANdisco enters 2021 with an unparalleled solution, deeply embedded into the world's largest cloud ecosystems and with the experience and financial platform to convert on a vast market opportunity.

"With these drivers and the Group's current pipeline and visibility, we remain confident in our ability to achieve at least $35m in revenues in 2021."

At 0855 BST, shares in WANdisco were flat at 450p.