Softswitch vendor MetaSwitch said Wednesday it recorded $92 million in sales for its fiscal year that ended Aug. 31. The increase represented 22 percent year-over-year growth, the privately held company said.
MetaSwitch is a division of U.K.-based Data Connection Ltd. (DCL), which reported “record” revenue of $118.1 million.
MetaSwitch said Tier 1 carrier deployments and more customers drove growth, despite a weakening economy. The credit crunch isn’t hampering the company directly, said John Lazar, president and COO.
“We don’t have massive exposure to the credit markets, which would hurt us,” he explained. The question, he noted, is how the economy will affect carriers’ capital spending.
Yet, if a new ABI Research report is correct, MetaSwitch won’t have to worry much. The firm found operators still will put dollars into their networks to keep up with data traffic demand.
For his part, Lazar is optimistic.
“There may well be pockets where there are slowdowns, but the economy doesn’t grind to a halt in these situations,” Lazar said, adding, “In difficult times there are also great opportunities.”
Indeed, MetaSwitch anticipates growth of 10-20 percent for fiscal year 2009. The company wants to snag larger carrier customers, pursue opportunities in the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia Pacific. It’s also eyeing FMC.
“We’ve always had good features to help wireline carriers break into more convergence applications,” said Lazar. “The iPhone and devices like it have really shifted the paradigm on what’s possible on next-generation mobile devices.”
MetaSwitch has developed an application that works across browsers, mobile devices and set-top boxes, Lazar said.
“It’s a unified approach to the four screens. It’s not so much wireless as breaking down barriers between wireline and wireless.”
That applications focus will continue to serve MetaSwitch well, said Eric Kainer, principal of networking and communications research at investment bank ThinkPanmure. Such a specialty “opens up a whole new area of growth in mobile,” Kainer said.
The activity mostly is taking place overseas, but “two-thirds of sales are going into mobile opportunities,” said Kainer.
Besides providing sales numbers and saying it was profitable for the 27th consecutive year, DCL did not divulge additional financial details. Its investors include Francisco Partners and Sequoia Capital.
