Test and measurement company EXFO saw decent growth in its revenues in the most recent quarter, and its profits increased as well. The company has made significant recent acquisitions that are broadening its offerings.
EXFO reported sales in its fiscal third quarter of $63.9 million, up from $58.9 million during the same period in 2013. Net earnings were $1.7 million for the quarter, compared to a net loss of $0.9 million a year ago and a significant improvement over a sequential net loss of $1.3 million.
Bookings were also up, from $61.8 million in the year-ago quarter to $66.5 million.
EXFO laid the groundwork for expanding its service assurance and analytics solutions with two recent acquisitions. During the quarter, it bought the assets of ByteSphere, which is a Boston-based software copmany that specializes in network monitoring and global IT management.
“This transaction extends EXFO’s service assurance offering into infrastructure performance visibility through highly scalable device and network element polling,” EXFO said of the move; the company has also said that it expects the purchase to improve its solutions for monitoring of small cells, wireless backhaul, and metro Ethernet.
The company followed up the ByteSphere purchase with that of Aito Technologies after the quarter’s close. Aito provides customer quality-of-experience analytics for mobile network operators. EXFO said it intends to “combine the analytics software capabilities of Aito Technologies with its own wireless product portfolio to provide mobile operators with heightened, end-to-end visibility of their 3G and 4G/LTE networks.”
Germain Lamonde, who is chairman, president and CEO of EXFO, said he was pleased with the company’s performance and “delighted with our improved market position in the wireless industry, both through the recent acquisitions of ByteSphere and Aito Technologies but also with several recently introduced solutions.
“All these initiatives have greatly elevated EXFO’s strategic relevance in the wireless industry as reflected by three recent contract wins, two of which occurred with tier-1 network operators after the quarter-end,” Lamonde said.
EXFO announced the most recent contract win earlier this week. It said the $2 million order from an unnamed global tier-1 mobile network operator included the “complete assessment of its mobile backhaul network infrastructure, from turn-up to real-time monitoring and advanced troubleshooting.”
EXFO said that most of that order will be recognized in its fiscal 2015 reporting.
The company also launched virtualized test function offerings for 10G and 100G networks last week.
