Aggressive plans for EDS after bumper year

Services and consulting firm EDS claimed a bumper revenue year last year and has aggressive plans to continue the growth in 2000.

EDS NZ head Robert Gray, at a presentation to media yesterday, said revenue grew 52% over the 99/00 year to $405 million. He said he was unable to separate out the Telecom deal from EDS’s results – the company handles the telco’s IT in the largest outsourcing deal in New Zealand – but said it was obviously a major component of results and that the project had “gone exceptionally well for such a big project”. Six hundred staff have “transitioned” from Telecom. Company profit details will be available in the middle of the year, says Gray, after the accounting audit is complete.

Gray says the company has signed new contracts worth $130 million, and will create 300 new jobs. The company employs 2300. The first six to eight months of 2000 were stagnant, Gray says, an observation he attributes to Y2K and a new government, but the last four months pick-up have been “paralleled” at EDS.

The company intends to increase revenue this year by expanding into small and medium-sized enterprises and penetrating further into the Auckland market. It also intends to extend its development of applications, increase digitisation of paper-based documents – citing the troubled Landonline and the work it has done for Births, Deaths and Marriages – and increase the amount of offshore work it carries out.

EDS was not keen to comment too directly on its esolutions investment other than to say the pact had brought 12 products to market and was “revving up” new channels. Likewise its involvement in the delayed Landonline mapping project with LINZ and the in-receivership Terralink; although Gray did says EDS has re-employed 43 Terralink staff on a short-term basis.

EDS globally had revenue of $US19.2 billion; it garnered $US18.53 in 1999.