LogMeIn Q2 2013 Earnings: CEO Talks MSP Channel Strategy
LogMeIn (LOGM), which is making a major channel and managed services push, announced stronger than expected Q2 2013 results today. In fact, CEO Michael Simon raised the company’s financial outlook for the rest of 2013 — triggering applause on Wall Street. Simon also talked about the company’s MSP and channel strategy during an earnings call tonight. Here’s the recap.
For Q2 2013:
- Revenue jumped 20 percent to $40.7 million.
- The company had a net loss of $1.4 million, but the real story had to do with revenue growth.
In a prepared statement, Simon said: “We’re happy to report a great quarter, a very good first half, and an increasingly positive outlook for the year. Strong sales growth across all of our core businesses helped us deliver results that exceeded the high-end of our guidance. As a result, we’re raising our full year outlook.”
Simon pointed to new platforms (like AppGuru and Xively) as future growth opportunities in the cloud application management and PaaS sectors. Plus, Channel Chief Ted Roller is ramping up a new partner program for MSPs to better leverage LogMeIn’s tools and VARs to resell LogMeIn solutions into corporate accounts.
Updated: Simon Talks Channel Partners
During tonight’s earnings call, Simon said: “…Yesterday, we announced a new IT channel program called LogMeIn Elevate. This program will focus on helping outsourced IT providers deliver new management services focused on cloud apps. And we intend to expand this program later this year to help channel partners to resell join.me and Cubby to their small and medium business clients. Today, LogMeIn counts thousands of outsourced IT professionals as loyal customers, and we see this new channel program as a natural next step to build on these long-standing relationships.”
Later in the earnings call, an analyst asked Simon how LogMeIn will train channel partners. His response: “Historically, LogMeIn has sold to channel players, they haven’t necessarily been a channel for us, they’ve been customers for us…So for us, the Elevate program is less about training them how to use a product and more about how helping build a successful business using our products as a key foundational element.”
When asked about potential cross-selling opportunities, Simon pointed to MSP partners and their ability to service vertical market customers. “We have such a great franchise in, what I would call, the managed service provider, MSP space. And their customers — if you look at any one MSP, they will typically have a pretty tight vertical customer base. It might be in financial — their end customers might be financial services, they might be in retail, they might be in health care.”
Roll them all together, and Simon sees more upside sales opportunities for LogMeIn and its channel.
