Driven by increased sales globally, a surge in new customers and a near 10 percent increase in R&D spending to develop new products, Cary-based SAS set a record for revenue in 2015 at $3.16 billion. And as a result, SAS is hiring both in Cary as well as around the world.

Revenues grew 2.3 percent over 2015 despite a strong U.S. dollar as the privately held firm that focuses on big data and analytics also stretched its streak of never losing money. Sales climbed from $3.09 billion in 2014 and $3.02 billion in 2013 – the first year SAS crossed the $3 billion plateau.

Growth was 2.3 percent but actually was much higher in “constant currency” – 6.4 percent – which takes into account the increasing value of the dollar. A stronger dollar had a big impact on SAS revenues from Europe-Middle East-Africa, where SAS recorded 39 percent of its sales. Despite the “currency headwinds” as Wall Street describes the dollar challenge, SAS increased sales across all geographies.

A key indicator of that growth is the number of new customers: SAS added 1,800 and its products are now utilized across 80,000 customer locations. That’s a third higher than just three years ago. New and updated products, an expanded partner sales program that SAS acknowledges produced “nearly half” of the company’s biggest deals, and organizational efforts within the company designed to bring more regional sales resources to bear at a country-by-country level paid off with growth.

“Probably the single biggest factor that really helps us is new sales, new business across the board,” explained Randy Guard, a 15-year SAS veteran who recently was promoted to chief marketing officer. “We had 12 percent growth – 8 percent in constant currency. The biggest way to combat [currency headwinds] is new sales.”

Guard could speak with enthusiasm in his first round of media interviews as CMO since “we reported revenue growth for the 40th consecutive year, and the the great thing is, yes, we are profitable again.”

“Obviously, revenue growth reflects long term relationships with our customers,” he added, noting contract renewals remain extremely important. But he also pointed out that “we had growth across all of our regions, and in a global economy like we have now, this now is exciting.”

Although SAS is privately held and therefore not required to disclose financial data to the degree publicly traded companies must due to federal regulations, it does each year report sales, revenues by product category, and other information such as research and development spending as well as employee headcount.

And since recording $138,000 in revenue in its first year of existence in 1976 under billionaire co-founders Jim Goodnight and John Sall, the company continued to grow across a wide degree of measures.

“For 40 years, SAS has been helping customers change the world with analytics,” said Goodnight, the CEO, in a statement. “As the leader in analytics, we continue to be the company people turn to for unrivaled expertise and solutions when it matters most.”

Success wasn’t limited to sales. Research firms such as Gartner and Forrester consistently rate SAS and its products highly. For example, a new report from Forrester ranked SAS as a leader in enterprise fraud management. And the company’s worker-friendly environment leads to SAS being ranked annually among best place to work lists.

Inside the sales numbers

For the second consecutive year, share of sales in the Americas grew, reaching 49 percent. That’s up one point from 2014 and 2.3 points higher than in 2013. Market share remained flat in Asia Pacific at 13 percent and fell one point in EMEA to 38 percent. EMEA sales as a share of revenue are down 3.4 points from 2013.

Global growth is a testament to “globalization” efforts within SAS in which regional teams were created to augment sales efforts in individual companies.

“We spent a lot of time launching a globalization effort that primarily is internally focused,” Guard explained. “The net goal was to engage our customers on a global level, and I expect more of that to show results in 2016 and 2017 as well.”

In a rapidly changing competitive environment with new and emerging technologies and applications while cloud computing became even more important, SAS countered bigger companies such as IBM and SAP by committing 25 percent of its revenue to R&D. That’s up from 23 percent in 2014 and restores the level SAS spent in 2013 and 2012. SAS pointed out that the software industry average is 12.5 percent.

Those R&D efforts led to new initiatives such as SAS Cybersecurity product suite launched last fall plus other products designed to capitalize on advances in cloud computing and data processing power. SAS also is exploiting opportunities created by the emerging “Internet of Things,” through which billions of devices and machines will be linked, thus taking more computing power for data crunching into the field and across corporate networks.

Further, SAS expanded its sales efforts through the addition of 150 partners – what is called ‘channel sales” – and also signed its first OEM (original equipment manufacturer) agreement for the embedding of SAS software in hardware manufactured by Toshiba.

“This is something we started a couple of years ago. We made a concerted effort on alliances and channels, and we see that paying off,” Guard said. SAS works with global giants such as Accenture to regional resellers who have “customer-facing” sales forces and thus serve as what in military terms is a force multiplier.

Financial-related services generated the biggest share of revenues at 39 percent (including banking, insurance, capital markets) followed by government at 15 percent and services at 11 percent.

Expansion plans

SAS also continues to expand its work force, and the “help wanted” sign remains up.

Headcount at its Cary headquarters grew 2 percent to 5,460. Company-wide, headcount grew 1 percent to 13,870.

In 2016, hiring already is off to a strong point. There are just under 400 openings, with 152 in Cary. That’s more than double the number available in early 2015 when 71 positions were open locally.

SAS will break ground on an additional building at its Cary campus. The company plans as well to open a new office in Detroit as the auto industry moves to further embrace data for its vehicle fleets. The company also says it plans expansion elsewhere.