On Saturday (21.08.2021) we sent out invitations to the General Meeting to several hundred small shareholders of WEDOS Internet, a.s. There is a very nice surprise waiting for them in the form of a proposal to pay the first dividend of our company.
WEDOS shareholder programme
From the beginning, WEDOS was a very unconventional project, which we conceived as open to the public. We turned the construction of the first datacenter into a reality show and regularly published all the details in the form of articles, expert texts, reflections, photos and videos.
From the dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments, we knew it worked. You’ve been following the build, the hardware reviews and our tenders. You have lived our hosting dream with us. And that’s when we had the idea to take it even further. Give everyone the opportunity to own a piece of WEDOS 🙂
In 2012, the company prepared for a capital increase and we prepared a public share subscription. It was a lot of trouble, but we saw it as another big step towards our transparency and openness to the community. It was also basically a test to see if there would be interest in the company’s shares.
Each shareholder was given the option of a 20% discount on hosting services (including renewals) and access to the shareholder forum.
The signing was a success. The interest exceeded our expectations and in 52 minutes all shares were sold out. And we had originally hoped to sell 20% of the free shares within 14 days. We deliberately chose to sell in the early evening, so that all the available shares would not be bought by a company that was interested in them. At the same time, we also made it possible to buy (click) shares only one at a time, so that someone would not buy shares at once.
WEDOS then and now
When subscribed, one share was worth CZK 100. We basically had one empty datacenter. In 2012, sales revenues amounted to approximately CZK 21M and the operating result was CZK -3.4M. At that time, only 14 people worked at WEDOS.
We now have two datacentres and the third has just now received all the necessary permits. The first one is already largely filled. Net turnover increased to CZK 134M (6.38x bigger) and the profit from operations exceeded CZK 10M. Our collective has grown to 39 people.
In addition, everything that could and would be repaid is repaid. We are past the big purchases and investments. The warehouses are full of hardware and everything you need. Invoices are paid immediately, there is plenty of cash in the accounts. Even now, so much so that we have nothing to spend it on reasonably.
So we have no choice but to pay a dividend to the several hundred shareholders who put their trust in us years ago.
We will also pay employees a 30% profit share this year, a figure that will bring them several months’ salary. We take it as a reward and motivation to grow further and we intend to continue doing so.
At the same time, it could be an attraction for future employees, as we anticipate further profit growth and thus rising remuneration per employee. Over time, this annual remuneration may well exceed the normal salary for the whole year. This could give us the best paid IT workers in the country.
Current share price and proposed dividend
What could be the current value of WEDOS Internet, a.s.? Only our boss, who is always being chased to sell the company, knows that 🙂
In 2019 in the article WEDOS is not for sale. We have plans. He revealed that the amounts offered have up to 9 zeros in Czech crowns 🙂
Some investors find some public statements, gather information about the company and offer sometimes very interesting amounts. These are amounts in the tens of millions (meaning in any foreign currency). They see it simply. They want to sell more different services to existing customers. They want to expand the offer. They want to focus on synergies with their existing projects and benefit from that. I understand, of course, that buying WEDOS (an incredible amount of money at first glance – in crowns with up to nine zeros) makes sense to them. The synergy effect with their projects, two datacenters, dozens of reliable employees, over 19% market share… you can’t buy that for a penny.
Which is a decent progress from the subscription price of 23M CZK 🙂
Now, in addition, an interesting dividend has been added as an incentive to hold WEDOS Internet, a.s. shares. The next general meeting will decide what to do with the unpaid profit of CZK 10M. It is on this amount that the dividend should be paid. If it was used in full, it would come out to 43.47 CZK per share at the purchase price of 100 CZK, which makes a decent dividend yeld of 43.47%. Each shareholder would thus receive after tax* approximately CZK 36.94 for each share held.
* Dividend withholding tax is 15%.
And we’re only at the beginning
As the number one on the Czech market, hosting more Czech domains than the next three competitors in the ranking combined, the claim that we are just at the beginning probably sounds very bold, but it is true.
In our second datacenter, where the servers will be cooled in an oil bath, we only have offices and 90 physical servers for oil bath testing so far. The entire datacenter will provide us with a great competitive advantage, because the electricity consumption will be incomparably lower and there will be considerable savings in the purchase of hardware (we do not have to pay for fans, for example).
We have new services(WEDOS Cloud, WEDOS CD, WMS) still in test operation, which are of great interest, but still need to be finalized. Most of the interested parties are waiting for the official launch of live operation, because contractually, due to their clients, they do not allow themselves to run their projects on anything that is in beta or test operation. These are not small clients.
We are working on WEDOS AnyCast, which will include unique protection based on our own lists of problematic IP addresses that often cause problems for Czech websites. These lists are created and regularly updated from data (access logs) of more than 230,000 websites. We don’t just track individual IP address activity within individual sites, but IP address activity across all of our servers. This allows us to catch even very subtle and insidious attacks. We believe that literally anyone with a website can be a potential candidate for this service. This website does not even have to be here.
More and more projects and services are planned. You definitely have something to look forward to.
Will WEDOS continue to be open to the public?
Believe us, we would very much like to return to the original concept of an open project or community project. Many of us miss this original idea.
My support colleagues have set up and are taking good care of a community website where you can not only ask for help, but even get something in rewards for helping others. The database of tutorials is gradually growing and there are already 77 of them. A number of improvements and extensions are planned.
The community is of course also about meeting in person. We need to get back to holding conferences and conventions. Now we have a place.
And as for the stock? In fact, they are very busy, so we are not planning another round of subscriptions. But we never say never. Mainly we don’t need more money, which is usually the main reason for issuing new shares. The possible exit of the current shareholders, through a share sale, is also not attracting anyone and no one is planning it.
If anything makes sense, it would be to go straight to the stock market, because that would make WEDOS even more credible. It would definitely benefit our brand. However, this is still a long way off. One of my colleagues said it takes a turnover of at least a billion to be taken seriously there. That will take a few more years 🙂