Xero's full-year net loss has widened but its operating earnings beat expectations and its revenue and subscriber numbers both grew substantially in the 12 months to March 31.
The New Zealand cloud accounting company announced on Thursday its revenue for 2022/23 grew 28 per cent to $NZ1.4 billion ($A1.3b), with subscribers growing 14 per cent to 3.74m.
Its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) - when adjusted for one-time costs such as those related to layoffs and its shutdown of cloud invoicing platform Waddle - was up 45 per cent to $NZ301.6m, beating consensus expectations by five per cent.
It declared a $NZ113.5m net loss, up from $NZ9.1m the year before.
"Xero's strong underlying operating result is underpinned by continued revenue momentum from both subscriber and ARPU growth," CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy said, referring to average revenue per user.
"Our FY23 performance demonstrates Xero's resilience to the macroeconomic conditions of the past year, and the value we provided to small business customers in a challenging environment."
RBC Capital Markets analyst Garry Sherriff called it a solid result, driven by Xero's successful management of its cost base.
He highlighted Xero's churn - the percentage of customers who choose not to renew their subscriptions - had remained "remarkably low" at just 0.9 per cent, beating RBC's expectations for it to lose customers given the deteriorating economic conditions.
"Churn beat shows the stickiness and resilience of the product offering," he wrote.
EToro market analyst Josh Gilbert was more pessimistic about the results.
"These headline profitability numbers results will ultimately disappoint investors given that its full-year loss increased significantly," he said.
"However, new CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is making big changes to drive profitability and that is coming with some short-term pain on profit."
At 11.30am AEST, Xero shares were up 6.5 per cent to $100.41.