Rod Drury says future exciting for Xero

Xero chief executive Rod Drury at the company's Napier officer opening in June. Photo/File

Xero's move to de-list from the New Zealand share market is a step in the right direction for the company's exciting future, chief executive Rod Drury says.

Last week Xero announced it would be de-listing from the NZX and consolidating its listing in Australia following an extensive strategic process canvassing all options.

The announcement came as the company revealed its first positive earnings of $5.4 million for the six months to September.

Mr Drury, who lives in Hawke's Bay, said the company was in a fantastic position after achieving a positive Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) for the first time.

"We put out some amazing results...it means we are now self-sustaining.

"It's huge...it's good to get to this phase, we're really independent...there are less risks now.

"All sorts of new people can be shareholders."

An achievement like this is helping the company drive forward into an exciting future, he said.

"We are an NZX success story and we should be proud of it."

In June the company opened a new office space in Ahuriri's Tech Hub which has a staff of more than 25.

The new office was proving popular with a number of staff members from the company moving from other parts of the country for the Hawke's Bay lifestyle, he said.

"It's going great, we've got a good team.

"We're continuing to have people come work here.

"We are just in a place where we have been having some of our New Zealand staff spending a week in the offices to see if they could see themselves living in Hawke's Bay."

The new location started as a contact centre hiring staff from Hawke's Bay but had grown with the addition of transferred technical and operations staff from other areas, he said.

"Now we've got that core team in place, we're working hard to provide that as an option.

"We've got a good diverse group of people in there.

"The Napier office is especially popular for people with kids and we're very encouraging of that."

More than half of Xero's employees live and work in New Zealand but 80 per cent of revenue comes from outside the country.

Globally the company has added more than 160,000 net new subscribers over the six months, growing numbers to 1,199,000 subscribers at September 30.

More than half of those subscribers are in New Zealand and Australia but the cloud accounting firm also grew its numbers by 54 per cent in the United Kingdom to 253,000 subscribers.

Its North America subscribers grew to 110,000 while its presence in the rest of world grew to 47,000 subscribers.

"Our strategy is to drive further growth in markets like UK, North America and Southeast Asia."

The company would stop trading on NZX on January 31, 2018, and de-list on February 2.