Content Delivery Network EdgeCast Now Profitable, EBITA Positive Since Q2

While many large ad small CDNs continue to try burn through a lot of cash, trying to turn a profit from delivering content on the web, content delivery network EdgeCast has been EBITA positive since Q2 and become profitable last quarter. The company, which has raised just $6M in one VC round, and a little over $10M in total, has grown their business very nicely in the past two years, with only a fraction of the money other CDNs have raised.

While EdgeCast won't talk about or disclose their revenue, I know they are slated to do between $15-$20M in total revenue for 2009. This is a far cry from the CDN revenue that Akamai, Limelight, Level 3 or CDNetworks is doing, but it does show that CDNs can in fact be profitable. While it is easier to turn a profit as a smaller provider, since you need less money, to date, even most smaller CDNs haven't even been able to survive. Panther Express raised over $20M during the course of their existance, wasn't profitable and ended up being sold for around $2.5M. (Originally I reported the number was $5M, but have since learned it was even less than that) CDN Vusion burned through $11M in VC money in 24 months and went under earlier in the year. EdgeCast has spent half the money Panther did, and has almost the same revenue to show for it, as a profitable company.

Over the next few months, EdgeCast is going to have to decide how big they want to grow to and what they want to become. While they can still grow their revenue, if they want to take their business to the next level  and say double their revenue, they'd have to go out and raise more money. Doing so would put them under a lot more pressure to grow faster and try and maintain profitability at the same time. But if they want to remain profitable, stay small and nimble and work towards being acquired by one of the telcos, they can just keep doing what they are doing now, with no additional funding.

For their part, I hope they stay small, stay focused and don't raise a lot more capital. Multiple telcos have said how much they like working with EdgeCast and a few of them have even publicly predicted that before long, one of the telcos will have to acquire someone like EdgeCast when the telcos are forced to stop re-selling CDN services and bring them in-house.