• Atlassian released its third quarter results with a 24-page shareholder letter.
• The Aussie-developed, NASDAQ-listed software company said the coronavirus pandemic had a “negligible” impact on the business.
• Co-founders and CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar said the company plans to come out “stronger” amid global uncertainty.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australian software company Atlassian released its third-quarter results on Friday, revealing that it was barely affected by the coronavirus.

In a “longer than usual” 24-page shareholder letter, cofounders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar pinpointed some of the company’s highlights during the quarter. These included a rise in new signups to its cloud services, shifting Atlassian’s planned summit from a physical event in Las Vegas to a digital one and hiring around 200 employees.

And while several businesses have been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Atlassian said it experienced a “negligible impact” to its financial results during the third quarter.

All up, the company has $2.1 billion in cash and short term investments. Its revenue during the third quarter was $411.6 million, a 33% increase year on year.

During the pandemic, the company was able to transition its more than 4000-strong employees to work remotely. It also continued to pay its hourly contractors who aren’t able to work from home – like its cleaning and hospitality staff – and offered to reimburse employees for work from home equipment they need.

How Atlassian performed in the third quarter

Atlassian expedited the release of free cloud editions across its core products – Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira Service Desk. New sign-ups to these services jumped 125%, helping Atlassian boost its number of users.

The company also reported an increase in its subscription revenue – up 47% year on year – which mainly comes from its cloud services.

In terms of customers, Atlassian added 6,261 net new customers during the third quarter, taking its total number of customers to 171,051. Of its new customers, more than 90% chose one or more of Atlassian’s cloud products.

Atlassian also kept hiring during the third quarter, signing on 359 workers, mostly in research and design roles. In fact, March was its strongest hiring month in history, with around 200 of those new hires joining the company in that month alone. And Atlassian is still planning to hire more people in the months ahead.

Atlassian aims to come out stronger following this global uncertainty

While Atlassian wasn’t badly affected by the coronavirus during the third quarter, early data on its fourth quarter showed the impact will “likely increase”. The company acknowledged that the virus will affect both public health and the macroeconomy.

“The reality of serving 171,000+ customers means that we have exposure to the small-business economy and economically impacted sectors,” the shareholder letter said, especially as the company’s cloud customer base is “more oriented towards small businesses”.

But the company is confident in its business model. “Our revenue model benefits from the fact that over 90% of our revenue comes from existing customers, and over 85% is recurring in nature,” the letter said.

Both Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar said they’re going to be on the offensive when it comes to the future of the business.

“In the coming months and quarters, we will play offense by leveraging three core competitive advantages: our culture, our business model, and our strong portfolio of products,” they said in the letter. They also want the company to come out stronger amid this global uncertainty.

“Turbulent weather and rough markets shake up leaderboards. Amidst global uncertainty, we are committed to emerging stronger from this storm. We have an obligation to help teams around the world collaborate and thrive.”

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