On Monday 1. 8. 2022, an ordinary general meeting was held in our second data centre WEDOS DC2, convened by the company’s board of directors. The shareholders were informed about the financial results, the state of assets and agreed to pay a dividend from the profit for 2021.
WEDOS shares
In 2012, we made a dream come true for many of our customers and fans. We gave them the opportunity to own a piece of WEDOS through a public share subscription. Shares could be purchased via an online form in the customer administration. We offered a total of 30 thousand shares at a price of CZK 100 per share. There are 230 thousand shares in total, so WEDOS Internet, a.s. was valued at only 23 million CZK at that time 🙂
The signing was a success. The interest exceeded our expectations and in 52 minutes all shares were sold out (and paid for).
As a token of appreciation for their trust, each shareholder is entitled to a 20% discount on the renewal of hosting services, up to 20% of the total subscription price of the shares they hold, each year. So some people got their investment back in the form of discounts in just 5 years 🙂
However, they had to wait 9 years for their first dividend. Last year we paid a gross dividend of CZK 43.47 per share (CZK 36.94 net dividend).
General Assembly 2022
We have scheduled the AGM for early August this year. There were fewer shareholders than last time. Our boss Josef Grill took the opening speech, welcomed the shareholders and informed them about the current state of the company. Subsequently, our accountant, and also a shareholder, detailed the company’s financial results for 2021. He also answered questions about the 2021 financial statements.
Hlavní údaje řádné účetní závěrky za rok 2021 (údaje v tisících Kč):
Rok 2021 Rok 2020 Změna v %
Dlouhodobá aktiva: 78670 82757 -4,94
Krátkodobá aktiva: 64063 56783 12,82
Aktiva celkem: 142733 139540 2,29
Výnosy celkem: 147631 134113 10,08
Náklady celkem: 137819 123491 11,60
Výsledek hospodaření za účetní období: 9812 10215 -3,95
Tržby 147631 133706 10,41
Vlastní kapitál: 36068 36257 -0,52
Dlouhodobé cizí zdroje: 116 4240 -97,26
Krátkodobé cizí zdroje: 106549 99043 7,58
Pasiva celkem: 142733 139540 2,29
Odpisy: 1890 1873 0,91
EBITDA (zisk bez odpisů..): 14234 14850 -4,15
Informativně EBITDA v přepočtu na akci v Kč : 61,89 64,56 -4,14For a complete balance sheet, see the audited financial statements [PDF].
As you can see, our revenues increased to CZK 147.6 million, i.e. by 10.08% compared to last year. However, there is also a noticeable increase in costs to CZK 137.8 million (up 11.60%).
For the sake of interest, we have not yet over CZK 80 million in revenue, which we have as deferred revenue. These are services that clients have paid for in the previous year but will be provided in the following year. These revenues are therefore above and beyond the above figures and will only be reflected in revenues in future financial statements.
The overall result (net profit after tax) was CZK 9.8 million (-3.95% year-on-year). This is mainly due to the increase in electricity costs, without which our profit would have been about 40% higher. However, we have also invested heavily in new technologies and further growth. For us, growth is a priority.
The higher profit was spoiled by a significant increase in the price of electricity and wage growth (higher wages). If not for these two significant changes in costs, we would have had a profit of approx. about 70% higher than in the previous year.
What was most talked about
Actually, there wasn’t that much talk about last year. The world has changed significantly in the last six months, so we discussed more current situations such as the significant increase in electricity, cyber security and new services. There was a lot of talk about the new decentralised WEDOS Global network and the first WEDOS Global Protection (WGP) service, which at the time protected over 300 sites, now around 600.
WGP has had many successes, which we have written about here on the blog. There is still and will be more to tweak and improve. But we have a fully functional tool that can not only stop attacks, but also collect data to improve future filters. We can provide protection very cheaply. A free plan for small personal websites is also planned.
In addition, WEDOS Global is not and will not be tied to our hosting services. If you have hosting elsewhere and are happy, you will still be able to protect it through WGP.
We have already invested several million crowns in the development of this new service last year and we have continued to invest this year. We have currently purchased several thousand servers and already have 13 locations across Europe and Asia. We are now looking at expanding to other continents. It’s a truly global IT protection service.
The oil cooling was also discussed, where development is still ongoing. The original plan to run new services on servers in oil in DC2 is likely to change. In order to reduce costs, some services will be moved from DC1 to DC2, where it will be cheaper to operate.
The shareholders were also interested in the fact that we already provide paid control to more than 20,000 domains through WEDOS OnLine. And we haven’t even started selling individual test credits on WEDOS OnLine itself yet 🙂
Dividend for 2021
The gross dividend is slightly lower this year – CZK 42 (net CZK 35.70) per share worth CZK 100. The shareholders voted to pay it on 30. 8. 2022. Anyone who held shares on 1. 8. 2022.
Conclusion
The above is only a very brief summary. The general meeting lasted more than two hours, where the main topic was all possible news and plans. We really have a lot of work ahead of us.
Best of all, we have a secure base, we’ve managed to resolve a number of issues that were holding us back, so we can focus undisturbed on further growth and service improvements.
We are constantly being asked to buy shares. I can’t. Only if one of the existing shareholders sells. One of our colleagues keeps telling us to go to the stock market. But he is alone. We’re going our own way. The WEDOS Global project could be for some exchanges (especially abroad), as it is an IT security project and has worldwide coverage and big global ambitions… Maybe sometime in the future the shares will be available… Before covid we wrote that WEDOS is not for sale and this is still true. There are still plenty of people interested in buying the whole WEDOS, but that’s not why we’re doing this…
In terms of turnover, we are not exactly the largest hosting in the Czech Republic, but in terms of revenue we are among the 3 largest. However, in terms of the number of active services we operate and the number of domains that are directed to us, we are the clear leader. We have more domains (and websites) going to our datacenters than the next 3 companies on the market combined. In addition, our datacenters host only our hardware, which we lease as a service to our customers. You won’t find foreign servers and other services running on them. We are not “some” housing company, but a pure hosting company that offers various types of hosting services to over 300,000 customers who have over 600,000 active services with us.
We are the biggest Czech hosting and moreover the biggest hosting in Czech hands.
We thank all our customers for their trust. We host not only small, private websites, but also websites with tens or hundreds of thousands of visits per day. Some of them are among the 100 most visited websites in the Czech Republic. We also host websites (and emails) of large companies with billions of dollars in turnover. You can find here several e-shops that have a turnover in the hundreds of millions of crowns or even over a billion. Even such projects have confidence in WEDOS.
We do not specialize in one industry or one business area or one market segment. You will find customers from all industries. Small, big. E-shops or industry or even restaurants. You will find here websites of companies that regularly advertise on TV. And so we could go on…
Finally, we thank once again all our shareholders and all our customers for their trust.