Xero Has Responded To MYOB's Claims On Customer Numbers, Saying Their Rival Feels Threatened

Alex Herber for Business Insider Australia writes: The battle for Australia’s small businesses is raging on today between cloud accounting companies Xero and MYOB.

On Thursday a spokesperson for MYOB said, “there’s a lot of hot air behind what Xero says. Always.”

Xero is “not comparing apples with apples,” according to MYOB. “They’re actually making a comparison where it suits them, and makes them look better,” the spokesperson said. “They’re nowhere near the size and the uptake that MYOB has.” The full article is here.

Xero has today fired back. The company’s MD of Australian operations Chris Ridd told Business Insider: “It’s disappointing to see our rivals, who seem to be threatened by our growth, resorting to untruths.”

He said being publicly listed on both the ASX and the NZX, Xero has an obligation to shareholders to be transparent.

Here’s what Ridd said in response to MYOB’s comments.

“We cannot lie about our customer numbers, nor would we,” he said.

“The fact of the matter is that as of 30 September this year, we had 158,000 fully paying customers in Australia and 371,000 fully paying customers globally, far and away anything we’ve seen MYOB claim it has on the cloud.

“Our Australian customer number doubled in the 12 months to 30 September 2014, and continues to grow quickly by the day.

“There’s no other way of saying it – Xero is the no.1 cloud accounting software provider in Australia. We have yet to see MYOB to break out its cloud customer numbers for New Zealand, so the true state of its online accounting market share is unclear.”

This morning it was reported Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and UBS have been appointed as joint lead managers on the float of MYOB.

It could be a sign that Xero’s gaining on the Australian accounting company or that it simply might just see 2015 as a good time to list.

MYOB CEO Tim Reed flagged the IPO back in September.

MYOB was contacted for comment but was unavailable at the time of publishing. We’ll let you know if we hear back.