ERoad quarterly US sales accelerate in June
By Paul McBeth
July 5 (BusinessDesk) - ERoad has posted its fastest quarterly sales growth in the US, where the logistics and fleet
management company's high hopes for rapid expansion have been confounded by slow uptake of the new federal compliance
regime for electronic logging devices.
The Auckland-based company sold 1,321 contracted units in the US in the three months ended June 30, taking its total
number of devices to 7,423, it said in a statement yesterday. That's an annualised increase of 87 percent, accelerating
from a pace of 36 percent in the March quarter and equal to 86 percent of the US sales it managed to achieve in the
entire March 2017 financial year. ERoad sold 3,090 units in its established New Zealand and Australian markets, with
45,029 contracted units across Australasia, with annualised growth edging up to 30 percent.
"Total contracted units growth in the quarter represents the single biggest growth in units for a quarter in ERoad's
history," chief financial officer Jason Dale said.
ERoad raised $40 million in an initial public offering in 2014 to provide a funding platform to launch into North
America where it created a beachhead in the state of Oregon on the invitation of the state transport office. At the
time, Oregon wanted to introduce light vehicle mileage tax in a shift away from fuel tax used to fund roads and highways
and was the first in the world to develop a road user charge tax, or vehicle miles travelled tax, which New Zealand has
adopted for heavy vehicles.
Those plans changed when US operators put off buying decisions ahead of a December 2017 deadline for commercial drivers
to adopt and use electronic logging devices, and ERoad spent the last financial year paving the way to build its sales
and marketing capacity in the world's biggest economy to prepare for that timeframe.
The company's shares last traded at $1.64 and have increased 2.5 percent so far this year, though are still well below
the $3 offer price in its IPO three years ago
(BusinessDesk)
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