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Posting its fifth consecutive profitable quarter, business communications provider 8x8 (News - Alert), Inc. today announced its financial operating results for the first quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended June 30.

During an earnings call Wednesday afternoon, company officials said total revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 was $16.8 million, compared to $15.9 million for the previous quarter and $15.6 million for the same period of fiscal 2010, an increase of 6 percent sequentially and 8 percent year over year. 8X8 ended the quarter with a total of $18.1 million in cash and cash equivalents.

Gross margin increased to 68 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2011 compared to 66 percent in the same period of fiscal 2010. Net income for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 was $1 million, or $0.02 per share, compared sequentially to net income of $1.1 million, or $0.02 per share, for the previous quarter and $414,000 or $0.01 per share, for the same period last year. 

“In May 2010, we brought on new business customers for the company’s managed hosting services, and see a growing pipeline of new prospects for these services based on the number of outstanding quotes for managed hosting and cloud-based computing services,” said Bryan Martin (News - Alert), CEO and chairman of the board of 8X8.

Martin attributed 8X8’s growth in part to the company’s enterprise sales team that was assembled earlier this year to bring larger SMB and government customers on board while creating the processes and procedures necessary to win and maintain that business.

During the first quarter of fiscal 2011, 8x8 added 32,896 new business lines and services, compared to 29,985 in the prior quarter and 27,937 in the same period last year. Business customer churn decreased to 2.5 percent, Martin said, compared to a churn rate of 2.7 percent in the previous quarter and 2.7 percent for the same period last year. 8x8 ended the first quarter of fiscal 2011 with 21,362 business customers.

“We believe attributes such as service maturity, reliability and breadth of feature set combined with 8x8’s proprietary technology, customer support advantage and overall financial stability are the qualities these enterprise customers are seeking and are what set us apart from competitive business VoIP service providers,” Martin said.

He also said that 8X8 recently made enhancements to its installation and configuration workflows and Web portals used to provision voice services to new business customers.

“We believe that these new improvements will positively impact the 30-day return rates of new business voice customers, as it will now be substantially quicker and easier to activate our IP phones and configure the base functionality of our phone services,” Martin said.

During the quarter, the company repurchased 97,700 shares of its common stock under its share repurchase program at a total cost of approximately $120,000, acquired managed hosting and cloud computing service provider Central Host, Inc. for $1 million in cash and $600,000 in unregistered 8x8 common stock, and made a strategic $250,000 cash investment in Stonyfish, a new private company in Los Altos, Calif.

In addition to its first quarter fiscal 2011 operating results, 8x8 also announced that its board of directors approved an extension of the company's current share repurchase program, authorizing the company to repurchase up to $2.0 million of its outstanding common stock from time to time until July 27, 2011.

In other 8x8 news, TMCnet reported that the company recently joined the Russell Microcap Index when Russell Investments reconstituted its family of U.S. indexes on June 25.

Membership in the Russell Microcap Index, which remains in place for one year, means automatic inclusion in the appropriate growth and value style indexes. Russell determines membership for its equity indexes primarily by objective, market-capitalization rankings and style attributes.