Long-term sustainable growth results in another record year for Milestone Systems, a global firm dealing in open platform video management software.
With an annual growth rate of 14 percent over the last five years, Milestone Systems’ net revenue increased to DKK 1.03 billion in 2019. The operating income (EBIT) was DKK 124 million
compared with DKK 194 million the previous year, a planned consequence of increased investments in innovation and development.
The positive revenue development primarily derived from an increase in license and Care sales. Moreover, Milestone Systems continued to increase sales in all its markets.
“Two major factors impact our positive result: Our continued focus on long-term sustainable growth, which has resulted in profitability every year, since our company was established 22 years ago. And perhaps more importantly, our people. Focusing on long-term sustainable growth requires the best people, who can identify the right opportunities for our company. If you don’t have the right people, even the strongest business strategy may fail,” says Interim CEO Lars Larsen, Milestone Systems.
In the past five years, Milestone Systems has nearly doubled the number of employees to more than 900 people. The past year increased investments have been made in research and development capacity, expanded engineering teams in Copenhagen and Sofia and the establishment of a new engineering hub in Barcelona.
Flexibility to make the right choice Milestone Systems continues to deliver flexibility to our community of partners and endcustomers, enabling them to respond fast to new disruptive technologies; our open technology platform allows partners to integrate with our software, and Milestone Marketplace, our open business platform, enables them to grow their business faster.
Milestone Marketplace was launched in 2019 and connects buyers and sellers to co-create innovative solutions. In 2020, we will launch version 2.0 of the Milestone Marketplace, that enables customers to find resellers and integrators who deliver video solutions.
“With these two open platforms, we continue to bring the power of open to our partners. To drive them forward, we have funded a program, Accelerate Innovation, with significant investments in our engineering teams. In 2019, we continued these investments, and as we have entered 2020, we are already starting to see the results,” continued Lars Larsen.
Outlook
Milestone Systems expects to further strengthen its global market position. Revenue growth will be driven by a continued expansion of our competitive portfolio of innovative products, including both Video Management Software and Network Video Recorders, as well as our international business ecosystem of channel partners, camera vendors, technology, and solution partners. As in 2019, we expect to see continued growth in both invoiced revenue and net revenue. Costs are expected to grow in balance with the top-line growth.
As a consequence of the COVID-19 virus outbreak at the beginning of 2020, forward-looking expectations, especially those that relate to future revenue and operating profit, are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause the actual development to differ materially from the expectations. The situation is being evaluated on a continuous basis by the Management.