Xero Cuts Losses For FY18, Thanks To Amazon Web Services

According to data released on Thursday (May 10) by small business accounting firm Xero, the company has reduced its losses for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 compared with last year. Reports from ZDNet said the company posted an after-tax loss of more than $19 million, significantly smaller than the $48 million loss posted in FY 2017.

During this FY, Xero noted that revenues from its core accounting product increased 37 percent, while revenues from other platform offerings nearly doubled. Separate reports in CRN said the improvements on Xero’s balance sheet can be traced back to its decision to migrate from Rackspace to Amazon Web Services (AWS) — which, Xero said, reduced data hosting costs and increased productivity. The company said the AWS migration improved its gross margins by 81 percent.

The earnings are the first posted by Xero’s new CEO Steve Vamos, who replaced Founder Rod Drury after announcing plans to step down from the position of CEO in March. According to Vamos, the earnings results signal Xero’s focus on scaling up and enhancing customer service.

Earlier this year, Xero delisted on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and consolidated its listing onto the Australian Securities Exchange. At the time, the firm said the decision would “provide longer-term access to a broader marketplace for Xero shareholders” as it expands its presence globally.

The company recently announced an expansion of its partnership with Stripe to enable businesses using Xero to accept ACH bank transfers.

“Our ultimate goal at Xero is to make sure small businesses are getting paid as quickly as possible while making the experience from set-up to reconciliation seamless,” said Craig Walker, chief technology officer at Xero, in a press release at the time. “Building on our partnership with Stripe, this new feature gives our customers even more ways to get paid efficiently while keeping sensitive information safe.”

Earlier this month, the two businesses also announced their participation in a new initiative from Microsoft to power invoice payments directly within the Microsoft Outlook portal. That collaboration sees U.S. users of Outlook able to use Payments in Outlook and Microsoft Pay to pay invoices sent via Xero.