Melbourne IT's first quarter revenue grew 565 per cent from $3.6 million in 1999 to $11.3 million in 2000, enabling it to achieve almost half its full year forecast of $24 million.
The one major contributor to the strong revenue preformance was the growth of the company's domain name registration division, and the fact that the division did not exist a year ago, Melbourne IT's Rob Stuart said.
"Melbourne IT was granted accreditation to offer domain name registration in April 1999 and we started the division in July. Therefore the growth in domain name registration was a case of growing from zero to what we have today," he said.
Despite its strong revenue performance in the first quarter, Stuart said Melbourne IT had no intention at this stage of increasing its forecast full year revenue. "It is still too early in the year to think about revising our full year forecast upwards, although I am confident that our year 2000 revenue will exceed $24 million," Stuart said.
Melbourne IT registered its 500,000th domain name at the end of the first quarter, and has since registered more than one million domain name licence years, globally and nationally.
Stuart explained that domain name licence years was the number of years domain names were registered for. Prior to January 2000, when customers register for a domain name, they were allotted two years, but from the start of this year, they could choose to register a domain name for one to 10 years.
Melbourne IT also offers enterprise online solutions, runs an Adavnced Service Application Centre, and an incubator for technology start-up companies.