Agree...UK and Aus results v impressive. USA merely a work in progress.
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A great result in my opinion. The markets to watch were Australia and the UK because Xero is coming under quite sustained competition there now, especially from Intuit in Australia who have taken out confrontational ad campaigns and discounted their Quickbooks product down to nothing for accountants. These numbers are very encouraging because it doesn't seem to be denting Xero's momentum.
Rhetoric seems to imply that new customer growth is accelerating.
At a total level yes as new customer growth in H115 was 87,000 compared to 73,000 customers in H214 (the previous half)
From the numbers this morning Australia added 49,000 new customers this half v 30,000 the previous quarter. Customer base up 45% over the half
NZ numbers grew by 17,000 compared to 16,000 in previous half - so still chugging along with customer base increasing 17% over the half.
UK grew by 14,000 but this was down on the 17,000 the previous half (summer a bad time?). Customer base only grew by 30% in this half.(and off a low base still)
North America is slack as - only 4,000 new customers this half which was only half the 8,000 increase in the previous half. Customer base only grew by 22% in this year. Only explanation North America is work in progress and lets hope like hell. Don't think Intuit would have lost too much sleep knowing Xero only increased their customer base by 4,000 over the last six months.
Last 3 halves new customers have been 54,000, 73,000 and 87,000 and total customers now 371,000. Bloody good numbers but that 1 million customers seems a long long way off. Australia is the only bright light keeping the big dream alive
I see an acceleration. As at late July, customer growth was 12.5k per month (slide 6 https://www.nzx.com/files/attachments/197240.pdf). But for the last 6 months the average jumped to 14.5k. The last two months (August/September) must have been particularly good with customer growth rates similar to Intuit's.
Their total customer numbers look like they are beyond the best case 'Scenario 4' from Claire Capitals Oct 2013 valuation report.
So on that Slide 6 of this mornings update how far is the blue bar going to move along the grey bar?
Why I ask Australia growing fantastically fast. Even applying 80% growth rate decay factor the projection is 1.9 million customers in 2020 but that's almost 100% market share. Whoops can't apply exponential growth to that extent here can I
Looking at the half year numbers they seem to get a decent boost when Xerocons (love that word) are in different countries and then fall back a bit. The power of marketing eh.
What's up - XRO were on the gainers this morning ....now on the losers board