Top tech revenue hits $10b

New Zealand’s top technology companies have passed $10 billion in combined sales for the first time and have employed an extra 4000 people.

Information technology services company Datacom is the sector’s biggest earner with sales of $1.5b in the past year, overtaking Fisher & Paykel Appliances on $1.14b.

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare ranked third with $894 million.

New Zealand’s 200 most profitable home-grown technology companies earned an extra $733m of revenue in the past year, taking the total to just over $10b, according to the latest annual industry report from the Technology Investment Network (TIN).

To keep up with demand, the companies collectively created an extra 4000 jobs in 12 months, to employ almost 44,000 full-time staff in total.

Photograph technology company Magic Memories had the largest increase in staff size, employing 1692 people in the past year to become a 2500-person global organisation. About 150 of its staff are based in New Zealand.

The TIN report, released yesterday, says the technology industry’s latest figures are a ‘‘milestone’’.

TIN managing director Greg Shanahan said it was a defining year for technology companies that saw plenty of sales in North America.

The top companies’ international sales accounted for 10 per cent of New Zealand’s exports in the past year.

Cloud services companies such as Xero and Pushpay were key drivers of the industry’s growth, helping to push it over the $10b threshold.

‘‘ICT drove 58.5 per cent of the revenue growth in 2017,’’ the report says.

‘‘Companies operating in ICT can often scale globally at a pace which is unattainable for the traditionally dominant high-tech manufacturing companies.’’

Two of the list’s previous top earners, software company Wynyard Group and business directory Gopher, were liquidated in 2016.