Mactel. This another I have not looked at in ages, but it came up due to something at work. Unless you are in this space, or you have a demand for such services you may not have even heard of them.

They have been around delivering data centres long before their potentially more famous nemesis NextDC (who they list as a primary competitor). Mactel have been around for going on 30 years and in that time have really stuck to their knitting. The business started in data centres and that is still a large part of the business. The diversification has been into directly associated data centre services or solutions. 

Basically, the business is: 

·       Data Centres (4x)

·       Cloud (Data Centres with managed compute)

·       Comms (to Data Centres)

·       Government (security, cloud and 2x purpose-built government Data Centres)

The pure Data Centre part of the business is now less than 10% of the revenue – not surprised they diversified. 

Over the last 5 years revenue has steadily but slowly increased. Around 5-ish percent. Net profit hasn’t fared as well with large investments required to maintain operations. 

CEO David Tudehhope is the co-founder and holds around 55% of the shares through Claiward Pty Limited.

Comparing to NextDC operates 11 data centres and unlike Mactel have stayed true to this path, avoiding diversification. Revenue growth in the past few years has been variable but growing significantly between 10 and 23%. Net profit, well forget about that. This has been a loss-making venture for the last few years.

Which would you choose. A, B or neither.