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Collin Furtado · · 4 min readTradeGecko saw 70% revenue bump, operating losses dipped 7.5x in 2020
As with a lot of other startups, 2020 started rough for Singapore-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm TradeGecko – it laid off a quarter of its staff in January due to limited revenue growth.
However, the company managed to turn things around and was bought by US-based business and financial software giant Intuit in August that year for a reported US$80 million. The sale was a spot of good news for the company amid the gloom and doom of the pandemic.
The TradeGecko team / Source: TradeGecko
TradeGecko, which offers inventory and order management software for online retailers, went on to turn a profit in 2020. According to its latest filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, the company reported a profit of US$70.7 million in the financial year ended (FYE) December 2020, coming from a loss of US$9.9 million in FYE 2019.
The startup’s CEO and co-founder, Cameron Priest, previously told Tech in Asia that TradeGecko was on track to break even in 2020.
On closer examination, though, the profit seems to be largely due to Intuit’s acquisition of the business. TradeGecko recorded a one-time cash gain of US$70.8 million from the sale of intellectual and intangible property rights to the US-based software firm.
Excluding this and another non-cash item (“gains from convertible notes”), the company would have registered an operating loss of US$1.2 million in 2020.
That said, this operating loss figure is 7.5x lower than the previous year and also the lowest in the last four financial years, indicating that TradeGecko was getting close to profitability.
(Note that the company’s 2019 financials accounted for only nine months – from April to December 2019 – due to a change in the financial year, which previously ended in March.)
Breaking down TradeGecko’s numbers, we see that the startup had a 70% growth in its revenue in 2020, bringing its total to US$11.6 million.
Subscription fees from its clients were still the largest driver and accounted for over 80% of the company’s revenue during the year.
TradeGecko also listed transfer pricing fees as a new revenue source, which amounted to US$1.5 million. According to the firm, this figure “relates to 6% cost plus charges to Intuit Inc. for R&D services.”
Major rollback in expenses
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After laying off a quarter of its staff in 2020, the SaaS startup appears to have reined in its expenses and is trying to sail toward profitability.
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