Xro - xero

[BFG]

Suggest Xero holders put this on repeat for oh, say all of 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rioYOoFqyAo

[winner69]

Just finished reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis. I think Rod Drury is using it as his playbook (in particular, the Healtheon experience). Good read. Interesting comparisons to current "new new things".

Michael Lewis should do a book on Rod

[gv1]

Anyone have excess to Australian, there is an article on Xero. I have stopped the subs.

[dingoNZ]

Anyone have excess to Australian, there is an article on Xero. I have stopped the subs.

XERO chief and founder Rod Drury is looking forward to the mooted $2.5 billion float of accounting software rival MYOB, amid claims the traditional players are rapidly reining in Xero’s first-mover advantage in the “cloud” computing market.
Amid claim and counterclaim about who is signing up the most small-business clients, Mr Drury insisted that, as a listed entity, Xero always offered the most transparent numbers.
“We are quite looking forward to the IPO, the real numbers are going to come out,’’ he said. “Even with MYOB — which is helped by its massive brand — we are far ahead of them in the cloud.’’
He predicted the MYOB offering would be a “hard sell”, given the funds were not earmarked for growth, but would allow private equity owners to sell down.
Belying the industry’s once gentle reputation, Xero, MYOB, Sage and US giant Intuit are engaged in a cross-border tussle for the hearts and wallets of small business and — crucially — their accountant advisers.
Xero’s ethos is that — unlike its rivals — it’s not flogging a reworked version of a legacy desktop product.
Xero spent $250 million developing and marketing its suite of “beautiful” cloud products, which allow users to access real-time *financial data anywhere, with an automatic feed to bank accounts.
“We were born in the cloud from day one,’’ Australian CEO Chris Ridd said.
Initially, investors backed the NZ-based Xero on its quest to grow client numbers from a starting point of zero, to one million. To date Xero has signed up 400,000 paying customers, compared with 370,000 as at the September 2014 half-year and 211,000 in September 2013.
The trouble is, winning over and retaining cost-conscious *businesses required large licks of marketing dollars and a maiden profit was still years away.
While dominant in its NZ market, in Australia Xero has a 5 per cent share of a market still dominated by the private equity-owned, homegrown MYOB.
In the US, Xero claims to be a “credible number two’’ in a market 90 per cent dominated by Intuit’s Quickbooks.
The locally listed Reckon, which historically distributed *Intuit’s Quickbooks, now competes with its Reckon One cloud product.
Having peaked at $42 a share in March last year, Xero shares now trade close to their October 2014 low of $14. Despite this *reality check, four out of the five NZ-based brokers covering the stock ascribe a “sell” call.
“Recent trading updates from desktop incumbents reveal they are growing at least as fast as Xero in the cloud,’’ wrote NZ broker Craigs Investment Partners in a recent report.
In the US, the firm says, Intuit’s cloud customer growth was 29 times Xero’s in the six months to September, while Sage reported “slightly faster’’ growth than Xero in Britain.
In Australia, MYOB’s growth was on par with Xero, which claims 150,000 customers.
Mr Drury counters that Intuit spends $1.2bn a year on marketing and had the benefit of five million desktop customers to convert. “We started with a clean slate. Intuit has thrown the sink at us,’’ he said.
In Britain, Intuit’s customer base of 20,000 compares with Xero’s 60,000. But he accepted Xero’s US progress was hampered by the appointment of the “wrong” CEO.
In September, North American CEO Peter Karpas was replaced by the company’s CFO, Ross Jenkins.
Reckon chief Clive Rabie believes Xero will struggle to justify its own heavy capital expenditure.
“They spend a hell of a lot of money,’’ he said.
“If you throw enough money at the market you will get some traction. Some time they are going to have to get return and they will have to keep prices high as a result.’’
Mr Rabie said while Xero has done a good job at marketing, it won’t find the land-grab as easy as all that. “Intuit isn’t going to sit around and watch,’’ he said and added that Reckon itself preferred to compete in niche areas rather than head-on.
Mr Drury, who co-founded Xero with accountant Hamish Edwards in a humble flat in Wellington eight years ago, said Xero consistently reported “clean” numbers over its two-year listed life, including average revenue per customer.
“What’s interesting about Xero is we funded it as a public company from day one. It’s all played out in public,’’ he said.
“It’s quite amazing the fug that gets created around what we are doing. Our approach has been very clear and transparent.’’
As for the pesky P word — profit — Mr Drury saids Xero could be break-even within two years if it slowed growth. “But that’s not our current plan.
“In New Zealand and Australia we are covering costs. We are not adding any new staff in Australia yet we are doing 100 per cent growth.’’
“We have plenty of access to capital and we are planning to grow a very significant business. You can see from the numbers it’s working pretty bloody well.’’
Craigs Investment Partners forecasts a $NZ58m ($56m) current-year loss and a similar result in 2015-16.
Fellow broker First NZ Capital tips a $NZ65m loss in 2014-15, widening to a $NZ80m deficit the year after.
Xero’s Australian boss, Chris Ridd, said Xero was not content to be a bit player in a climate in which the aim of the game was to convert sometimes reluctant small businesses to cloud technologies. A former Microsoft executive, Mr Ridd said that as with his old *employer there was a distinct lack of innovation in the sector.
“True software development is an art form,’’ he said. “The incumbents have been asleep at the wheel. MYOB has only just decided cloud should be the way and adopted a hybrid *approach.’’
Mr Ridd said while some small business users remain cloud-reluctant because of security concerns, he maintained that cloud was safer than an on-premise server or a laptop strewn on the back seat of the office car. He cited a Queensland bookkeeper client whose office was flooded: “She could do the payroll from a friend’s PC while her server at work got completely trashed.’’
Along the way, their accountants were liberated from humdrum box ticking and could focus on value-added business advice. “Compliance is dead money, they can’t charge for it,’’ he said.
While Xero claims to be winning a high proportion of new clients from MYOB, 40 per cent of small business customers have no accounting software at all.
Or if they do, it’s called a shoebox.

[gv1]

[QUOTE=dingoNZ;525442]XERO chief and founder Rod Drury is looking forward to the mooted $2.5 billion float of accounting software rival MYOB, amid claims the traditional players are rapidly reining in Xero’s first-mover advantage in the “cloud” computing market.


Thanks mate. Great infor.

[babymonster]

Cloud is picked by companies very fast. Xero has no option to move fast in a new market

[RGR367]

Cloud is picked by companies very fast. Xero has no option to move fast in a new market

They will move as long as they don't get the issues/complaints as what these Intuit users are having http://www.consumeraffairs.com/compu...quickbooks.htm Would anyone knew if XRO is inundated with so many issues too?

[zijiji]

This appeared on TechCrunch a few minutes ago: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/xero-payroll/

[Harvey Specter]

This appeared on TechCrunch a few minutes ago: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/xero-payroll/

love the last sentence

[artemis]

They will move as long as they don't get the issues/complaints as what these Intuit users are having http://www.consumeraffairs.com/compu...quickbooks.htm Would anyone knew if XRO is inundated with so many issues too?

Just had a looksee at that site and could not see any category for Xero complaints.