Atlassian's stock has doubled in the last year — but its president says the Australian tech company has lots of room to grow (TEAM)

jay simons atlassian president

In the wake of Atlassian's latest earnings report, company president Jay Simons spoke with Business Insider.
Although its stock dipped Thursday, Atlassian has had a lot of good news lately — its share price nearly doubled in the last year, and its revenues are close to hitting $1 billion on an annual basis.
Simons touted the Australian software giant's growth prospects and the way it's finding new customers.

Australian software giant Atlassian, known for its popular collaboration tools, including Jira, Confluence, and HipChat, is on something of a tear.

Its stock has nearly doubled in the last year. And in its most recent quarter, which the company announced Thursday, its revenue hit $212 million, up 43% from the same period a year earlier.

That's put the company tantalizingly close to a big achievement, noted Atlassian President Jay Simons, in an interview with Business Insider.

"We're kind of knocking on the door of $1 billion in [annual] revenue," he said. "That's a milestone to be proud of."

Driving Atlassian's growth is what BTIG analyst Joel Fishbein, in a note to clients, recently called a "viral sales strategy." The company doesn't have a direct sales team. Instead, it attracts new customers largely through word of mouth. The approach seems to be working; Atlassian added 5,000 new customers in its most recent quarter, Simons said.

"Customers are buying our products; we're not selling them," he said.

The company is expanding globally, opening up new customer contact centers all over the world. It's also betting big on recent acquisitions such as Trello, a project management tool that puts Atlassian into more direct competition with Microsoft Office.

Still, much of Atlassian's growth is coming from its existing corporate and institutional customers, Simons said. Typically, the company's tools initially found traction with customers' programmers, IT staff, and other technical workers. Now they're starting to attract users in customers' legal departments, sales teams, and other nontechnical departments, he said.

"There's still a lot more teams to reach," Simons said.

Atlassian had a minor setback on Thursday. Its stock plunged about 5% after the company announced a $65 million loss that was partially due to changes brought by the recently passed tax law.

Despite that, per Nasdaq, Atlassian is rated a "Strong Buy" by seven out of the 11 financial analysts covering the company, with the rest rating it a "hold."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: These 3D printed implants could help patients with bone cancer