LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Data technology company WANdisco reported "strong" fourth quarter trading in an update on Wednesday, following "significant" contract wins both directly, and with its key cloud channel partners including Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM, as well as its primary analytics partners Databricks and Snowflake.
The AIM-traded firm said that as a result, its preliminary unaudited revenues were expected to be in line with current market estimates, upgraded in December.

Fourth quarter bookings increased 30% year-on-year to $8.4m, and for 2021 as a whole, bookings were ahead 17% at $11.9m.

Ending remaining performance obligations (RPO) were expected to total about $9.4m for the year - up 92% year-on-year.

Towards the end of 2021, WANdisco said it took steps to realise efficiencies in its business model through "prudent" sales reorganisation and cost management.

The company said it had a strong balance sheet, with its year-end cash position expected to be around $27.8m, up 32% over 2020, with $1.2m in trade receivables.

Its board said that in the last year, it had made steady progress in its transition to a cloud-centric, consumption-based model, resulting in more predictable revenues, reduced discounting, and increased upsell opportunities.

The cloud platform model of the 'commit to consume' contract structure, where a customer was obliged to move a minimum amount of data over a given time, was now the standard for WANdisco.

That helped to drive strong RPO and bookings growth in the second half, as the firm said it benefitted from a stream of committed revenues that had the potential to increase as the data needs of customers expanded.

The transition also allowed WANdisco to deepen its relationships with key partners, the directors said, including Oracle.

Earlier in the week, WANdisco said Oracle would now provide fully-funded access to its 'LiveData Migrator' platform, to support its enterprise customers and partners in accelerating data lake migrations to the cloud.

It said Oracle had a large, defined pipeline of opportunities, driven by its cloud services business.

The general availability of the LiveData platform for Azure was successfully launched in the second half, which WANdisco said marked the completion of a multi-year joint project with Microsoft to integrate its technology into Microsoft's cloud.

Looking ahead, the company said the high visibility of its near-term business pipeline underpinned confidence in a strong trading performance in 2022.

It said it saw "significant" market opportunities in internet of things (IoT) driven deals, as well as expansion into new verticals in the coming year.

"The WANdisco team has worked incredibly hard to lay the groundwork for a significant acceleration in new customer wins through an effective restructuring of our sales organisation," said chief executive officer David Richards.

"We are now seeing the benefit of this labour as we look to secure larger deals, in new markets through our growing, market leading product portfolio.

"The new contract wins we saw in the fourth quarter directly and through key industry partners are testament to the strategic progress we have achieved across the business this year, while the general availability of the LiveData platform for Azure - announced in October - was a critical step in converting WANdisco's new business pipeline."

Richards said the company was "excited" by the apparent market opportunities to enter new verticals, and was "well-placed" to capitalise on an expected increase in IoT-driven deals in 2022.

"The fourth quarter saw a significant increase in bookings and RPO, and this momentum, combined with high near-term visibility, gives us confidence in our ability to execute on the company's strong first quarter and first half of 2022 pipeline."

At 1219 GMT, shares in WANdisco were down 1.9% at 309p.

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