Q4 2011: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

Today, we announced Comptel’s financials for the fourth quarter of 2011 and for the year as a whole.

The past year was my first at Comptel, and it was one in which I led the company through necessary transformation. We renewed the organisation and executive board, established new teams and offices, launched new values and formulated a new strategy. We also hired a significant amount of new people to get closer to our customers and prospects. In addition, we increased our investments in R&D to bring new products to the market.

Obviously, this having been a period of transition, our net sales have remained flat (€76.8 million), and our profit has been affected by the investments for growth that we have made (operating profit excluding one-off items was €2.8 million).

However, I am pleased to see that the work we have all put into improving Comptel is beginning to bear fruit. For example, both employee and customer surveys are showing increased satisfaction. We have also managed to win 15 new customers this year, five of which are located in new countries for us and 10 of which came in Q4. Our order backlog has improved significantly, with 23 orders with a value over 500,000 euros booked during the year. This, I believe, creates good conditions for growth in 2012.

Q3 2011: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

It’s been a really busy and eventful third quarter for Comptel, and today we announced our results.

Over the past quarter, we announced the agreement reached with Cisco to purchase the AXIOSS assets. This obviously had a significant financial impact on the quarter. It also provided Comptel with the incentive and the means to accelerate the development of our Next Generation Fulfillment (NGF) platform (more details about this soon).

During the three-month period, we closed three major deals with a value of over €0.5 million. We also continued investing in our sales channels and service organisation, and hiring new employees, as part of our strategy to get closer to our customers.

So in terms of the results, Comptel’s business developed favourably in the Middle East and the Americas. Net sales also grew in Europe West; however, in Europe East, the deliveries remained few. Overall, Comptel’s net sales were €16.6 million, up from last year’s Q3 (€15.3 million), but still below our expectations. Our operating result, excluding one-off items, was €-0.8 million as result of the investments we have been making. Once the impact of the AXIOSS sale is taken into consideration, the operating result is €8 million.

Comptel has been working hard on many fronts, including our strategy, which we will be unveiling this quarter. So stay tuned!

Comptel to Sell Axioss Software to Cisco

Today, we announced our intention to sell to Cisco the Axioss software, originally developed by Axiom Systems, which Comptel acquired in 2008. This deal, which is worth EUR 21.3 million, is estimated to close in September 2011. Comptel will continue in the fulfillment business, developing and selling the Comptel Fulfillment solution. Comptel and Cisco will also continue in their cooperation across other areas of OSS/BSS, e.g. cloud mediation and charging.

Comptel originally acquired Axioss in order to strengthen our position as a leading provider of fulfillment solutions for broadband, mobile and next-generation IP networks. Our strategy remains unchanged. We have been busy working on the next release of our fulfillment solution, based on a new technology platform, which will be released in the first half of 2012. Comptel will also retain its existing Axioss customer relationships and will continue to support these customers.

As part of the deal, Cisco is also taking on some personnel related to the Axioss assets, mainly those based in the U.K. Mr. Gareth Senior, Comptel’s CTO and member of the Executive Board, will be transferring to Cisco.

As you can imagine, we are very excited about this deal. In my opinion, it underlines our technology leadership in the OSS/BSS domain.

Q2 2011: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

Today, we announced our results for the second quarter of 2011 and the first half of this financial year.

This past quarter has been a decent one for Comptel. Our order flow improved from the previous year, and our business developed favourably in the Middle East and Africa, where the measures initiated late last year, such as investments in customer service and consulting resources, have yielded results. In our largest market, Europe, the net sales remained low, which was the main reason for a decreased Group net sales. However, we are optimistic that the decision to split Europe into East and West, and to reorganise our operations to get closer to customers, will help improve the situation. Overall, Comptel’s financial position remained strong during this period.

Looking beyond the figures, the first half of 2011 has been a busy one for Comptel. We attended a number of large events, including Mobile World Congress (Barcelona, February) and Management World (Dublin, May), and held our very own Comptel User Group – CUG (Helsinki, June). All of these were excellent showcases for us, and we had many successful business meetings. We also closed 10 deals of over €500K in value (compared to eight in the same period last year), including four that we consider strategic (NBN CO and three Comptel Control & Charge) deals. Also, as mentioned above, we reorganised to bring our sales and services capabilities closer to our customers and prospects. In particular, we grew our sales force in Australia, Germany, Italy, Russia and the UK. We also made a number of new appointments to the board.

Going forward, Comptel will continue to invest further in the development of our sales and service channels, as well as in our products.

So all in all, it was a busy first half of the year, and we have an even busier second half ahead of us!

Q1 2011: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

Today we announced our Q1 2011 results. I have to admit they were disappointing on the financial side. Most notably, our net sales in Europe and the Middle East did not live up to expectations.

On the positive side, the APAC region continued to perform well. I was especially pleased about Australia’s NBN Co becoming a customer. NBN Co is doing very leading-edge things, bringing high-speed broadband to virtually every premise in the country. It’s a very high profile initiative, and I know many other countries are looking carefully at similar developments, so we are really excited about being part of this ground-breaking initiative.

From an organisational point of view, Q1 was a period of change. We continued to implement our initiative to get closer to customers and partners, chiefly by putting resources next to them. We also announced the split of our European operations into Europe West and Europe East, to take into account the very different features of the markets in terms of maturity, saturation and growth. We also got positive customer feedback about the new setup for the Inventory business.

This will be in many ways a year of building a new foundation for growth.

Q4 2010: An Update on Comptel’s Business and Strategy

On January 3rd, I officially joined Comptel as the new CEO, so I have now been with the company for just over one month. Already, I have travelled extensively to meet customers as well as Comptelians across the world. I have visited the U.K., Italy, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. I have seen some excellent collaboration between Comptel, its partners and communications service providers–and have been very impressed!

Today, Comptel published its Q4 and 2010 results. Comptel’s business developed favourably during the last quarter of the year, with net sales growing and good profitability in Europe, Asia-Pacific and in the Americas. Solution sales picked up towards the year-end, and we also agreed on projects to consolidate and extend some of the systems that have been delivered earlier. Overall, our 2010 financial results have improved from the previous year. Most pleasing of all is to see that partner sales have grown, in line with our strategy.

Overall, our financial position remained strong. This, combined with our excellent products, people, partners and customers provides us, I believe, with a solid basis on which to build up the company.

Introducing Juhani Hintikka to “The Dynamics of OSS”

Last week, Comptel announced that I would be taking over as CEO from January 2011. However, I didn’t want to wait that long to contribute for the first time to the blog.

I have to say, I am really excited about joining Comptel. It’s a company I know well, not least because I was on the board between 2007 and 2008. Comptel is a company with a great history and, I believe, a great future.

A few words about my background. Since 1999, I have been working in telecoms at Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in various roles.

At first, I was involved in an internal start-up looking at wireless broadband access. Then I moved into sales and marketing, focusing on growing Nokia’s business in emerging markets. After that, I moved to services to help fix some major problems with customer satisfaction.

Shortly after the creation of NSN, I took over the responsibility for the OSS/BSS business. This was one of the global businesses in NSN and meant heading up a unit with people across the world, mostly software R&D but also customisation services.

Finally, at the start of 2010, after a reorganisation, I became head of the newly created OSS business that included all services and third-party software. I have also been on the board of TM Forum in 2008-10.

I have had the opportunity to see and experience a lot of things in telecoms. And now, I have been given a chance to apply that experience to running one of the best known independent software vendors in the OSS business!

Comptel is a recognized player in the industry. It has a good product portfolio, especially with the acquisitions made in the last few years. I also think Comptel has solid financials, despite the challenging Q3 results. And I believe Comptel has taken positive steps towards working more with partners.  But most importantly for a business in this knowledge-intensive industry, Comptel has some very good people working for the company.

In short, I think the fundamentals are good; the right building blocks are there. So right now, I just can’t wait to get going!