Special Report: The funding round saw strong demand from Xref’s existing institutional investor base, comprised of leading super funds and investment firms.

HR tech platform Xref (ASX:XF1) is in prime position to make bigger strides in its global growth strategy next year, after topping up its coffers with $3.5m.

The capital will provide flexibility moving forward, after a watershed year in 2019 which saw quarterly sales hit new record highs.

That growth was accompanied by the launch of the Xref Lite platform, while the company also secured key partnerships and executed on strategic acquisitions.

And the result of all that hard work is that Xref now has a distribution network and customer base that spans across multiple jurisdictions.

The company completed a “non-broker” raise for its latest funding round, instead raising capital directly from existing investors — evidence of Xref’s strong ties with its institutional investor base.

The $3.5m round also saw the addition of a new blue-chip investor – a leading Australian investment fund – to the register, accompanying further investments from Xref’s existing group of institutional backers.

In turn, the company is now in a position to push towards cash-flow break even in 2020.

For Xref, that will mark a key milestone in a multi-year strategic plan, after the company first joined the ASX back in 2016.

 

Speaking with Stockhead, CEO Lee-Martin Seymour said the rationale for joining the public markets at the time was to take advantage of a global market opportunity for online recruitment.

Xref joined the ASX boards as a profitable private enterprise, but the company knew it would have to deploy some capital to scale up across international markets.

“Since then, we’ve gone from a company with five staff and revenues of $700k, to one with a global workforce of 100 employees and annual sales of $10.1m,” Seymour said.

“We knew the nature of our platform had a global market. And we’ve done everything we said we’d do to take advantage of that opportunity.”

As it reaches a critical mass of customers in its scale-up ambitions, Seymour said the company now had the pieces in place to substantially reduce the cost of acquiring new customers – savings that would flow through to the bottom line.

“Operationally, this raise gives us some extra flexibility to accelerate growth and reach cashflow break-even, and do it in the short term,” he said.

Read More:

Xref seals strategic alliance in an effort to deliver holistic HR Tech platform to the ANZ region

Tech company Xref gets set for take-off after ‘defining quarter’ of growth in Q1

VIDEO: 90 Seconds With… Tim Griffiths, Xref

This story was developed in collaboration with Xref, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing. This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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