Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Megaport Limited (ASX:MP1) CEO and Executive Director, Denver Maddux Carolyn Herbert: Hello I’m Carolyn Herbert from the Finance News Network and joining me from newly listed company Megaport is CEO and Executive Director Denver Maddux.
Denver, congratulations on the listing.
Denver Maddux: Thanks very much.
Carolyn Herbert: So investors not familiar with Megaport can you give us an introduction to the company?
Denver Maddux: The company was founded in 2013 by Bevan Slattery; he’s one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, specifically in the telco and internet space. The concept was to create the world’s first elastic fabric which as a network is a service using software defined networking technologies that gives customers the ability to use a network the same way they do cloud computing. So elastic in nature, dial it up, dial it down based on your businesses needs at the moment.
Carolyn Herbert: Denver, for investors who participated in the IPO at what price did you start trading?
Denver Maddux: We opened today at $2.40; we listed the stock at $1.25, so this is a nice jump. I’m pretty humbled by that number, I was trying to keep the number out of my head we always get excited when any company lists of course, thinking where it is going to go on day one. I know our CFO had a number in his head and that has exceeded that so we’re incredibly happy with that.
Carolyn Herbert: The listing raised $25 million, what value does this put on the company and where are the funds going?
Denver Maddux: The market cap of the company is listed in our prospectus after a raising of $87.5 million. The money that we’ve raised in this is really to take the company global so well outlined in the way that we are using these funds in our prospectus. But in short, to move the company’s business into North America and Europe and beyond the Australian and APAC footprint that we’ve already built today.
Carolyn Herbert: Can you tell us about your strategy, priorities and success in winning new business at this early stage in the company?
Denver Maddux: Our goal is to just go capture as many customers as we can, so really get as many people onto Megaports, to Megaport as many locations as we can and to bring value to our customers, which has been the goal from day one and at the centre of everything we do.
Carolyn Herbert: What’s the size of the market for your solution and what’s Megaport’s competitive advantage?
Denver Maddux: We are the first mover in the market. We pioneered the concept of an elastic fabric and we want to push that really hard and fast out to other markets. The value is that we have created a highly intelligent, automated, software-defined system that gives customers ultimate flexibility and agility in using our service. The size of the opportunity is, we’re working closely with cloud service providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google for example and we’re partners with those companies so we’re helping serve the customers that they are bringing to the cloud. We think that it is a pretty significant opportunity.
Carolyn Herbert: And what are your financial targets for the next 12 months?
Denver Maddux: Generally, we’re not ready to set targets like that, but I think for us it’s a matter of really getting as many customers onto ports as we can. So our focus is less about specific financial goals and more about getting people onto ports. We look at ports the same way a mobile company might look at handsets. You’ve got to get a port to use the service and we just want to get as many users onto Megaports as we can.
Carolyn Herbert: Finally Denver, where would you like to see Megaport this time next year?
Denver Maddux: In a year’s time we’d like to be done with all the builds we’ve outlines in our prospectus, so we’ve a lot of sites, we’re more than doubling the footprint of the company today from a locations perspective, we’re increasing the size of our staff on a global basis, hiring all of our staff that we planned out in North America, having our staff situated in Europe and really picking up a lot of customers. So growing the number of customers that we have by a few factors.
Carolyn Herbert: Denver Maddux congratulations on the listing and thanks for the introduction to Megaport.
Denver Maddux: Thank you very much.
ENDS
