A Look At Canonical's Financial Performance From 2009 To 2017
The data was compiled from the public reports of the UK's Companies House with their most recent filing having been last week for their 2017 fiscal year that ended back on 31 March. Their reports go back to 2009 when the Canonical Group Limited entity itself was formed. Of course, Canonical/Ubuntu itself dates back to 2004.
In 2009 when Canonical Group Limited was formed they had an average head count of 62 that has grown nearly every year where at the end of March 2017 with 566 an average head count for FY'2017. It will be interesting to see how this goes for FY'2018 considering the layoffs that began in April when diverting from their Unity 8 / convergence / Ubuntu Touch plans.
And then most interesting is their financial performance showing their revenue each year, going from 10.9 million USD in 2009 to 125.9 million in FY'2017.
For those wondering how the operating profit/loss each year compares, here are those numbers (didn't graph it since was just reusing PTS' pts_Graph and never had a need previously to support negative numbers given they don't come up in benchmarking):
Canonical Group Limited
Operating Profit/Loss
FY'2009: $281,000
FY'2010: -$8.8M
FY'2011: -$12.4M
FY'2012: -$11.0M
FY'2013: -$21.6M
FY'2014: -$3.3M
FY'2015: -$10.5M
FY'2016: -$3M
FY'2017: $2M
While just two million in operating profit this year is the first time they managed to turn a profit since the $281,000 amount in 2009. Again, will be interesting to see how this changes in FY'2018 considering they pulled back on Unity 8 and are focusing more on their profitable areas in services/cloud/servers and looking to enhance their financial outlook ahead of a potential IPO in the years ahead. Those wanting to go through all of the numbers can find their Companies House reports here.
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