Dear Reader,
You may not have noticed, but I didn’t send you an update last month. While this month should be me giving some sort of end of year message, instead it will be an overdue quarterly financial update.
What I would’ve told you is how amazing our Frontier Feast was, and how great it was to celebrate nine years of life on the Frontier with 30 outstanding colleagues, friends and family. Or, I could’ve talked to you about how proud I am to see the team flourish while Sophie is on parental leave, or while Francis went on his well-deserved vacation, but instead we’re talking numbers. I really wish I could’ve taken the time to gush about how Nick’s now in his sixth year, and short of me, has worked for Frontier longer than anyone else.
But here we are, talking dollars and cents. I wouldn’t be able to spend so much time talking about numbers if it wasn’t for the dedication Sarah has had whilst growing a baby, taking two quick breaths, then diving right back into life as BKeeper’s general manager and our very own bookkeeper. Heck, I wouldn’t even have the capacity to sit down and type if it wasn’t for Melissa’s superb assistance.
To reiterate why a small business owner is talking publicly about finances, I’ll quote myself from a year ago:
Transparency is, to me, a universal good. These updates are a means of accountability as a financial steward and small business leader to the community (you). Imagine if more privately-controlled companies disclosed their performance. Perhaps there would be more ethical behaviour as well as a greater financial literacy among communities.
So yeah, a bit of a reach, but I also enjoy writing if we’re being honest. A friend of mine suggested that I expand my writing beyond corporate memos, I heeded that advice this morning and I’m quite glad I did.
These quarterly updates will be my opportunity to let you know Benifactor’s progress in getting back into the black. So how’d we do?
For our fiscal 2019/2020 first quarter, the company posted quarterly revenue of $960 thousand, an increase from $738 thousand the year-ago quarter. This is astounding, but it’s also because a lot of activities that would normally happen in November, completed in October.
Continuing the trend of annual growth, our revenue this quarter is 61% higher than two years ago. Q2 will be much smaller year over year, but continuing a trend we started last year, we’ve been front loading expenses from insurance to hosting to ensure our expenses are paid when the times are good.
And, just like last year, we netted cash to the tune of $115 thousand to last year’s $118 thousand. That means that each year we receive six figures worth of cash more than we send out over this period. The trick has been that every other quarter has seen significant outflow, particularly this spring.
If we’re going to get into the black, it will mean strong performance not just now, but in the warmer days of the year. We’re making expected steps in the right direction, but while it’s cool to generate almost a million dollars in revenue in three months, it’s scary how easy it is to stumble.
Some other highlights:
Quartermaster (formerly simply just Glass Register) now has five figures in product revenue for a single quarter, a feat to be sure.
Charity Electric broke a string of three straight quarterly losses to have a profitable quarter all while delivering outstanding value to new clients.
Payroll is up $30k from a year ago all while changing over staffing structure with significantly fewer executives to junior employees.
We spend zero dollars on advertising and marketing for ourselves, something I hope we can invest in better in the months ahead.
As usual, I welcome feedback and questions. Shoot me an email at ben@benifactor.com if anything struck you.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Johnson, CEO