Wikimedia Enterprise Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2022 – 2023

This is the second financial report for Wikimedia Enterprise. The first, published in February 2023, covered the calendar year 2022 which was the first year of operations for the project. With this report we are now able to bring Wikimedia Enterprise reporting into sync with other Wikimedia Foundation financial reports – which cover the fiscal year of 1 July – 30 June. Consequently, for this time only, there is a 6 month overlap of the period covered by these two reports as this is the first full fiscal year that Wikimedia Enterprise reported revenue.

Summary 
For the fiscal year 2022-23¹, both monthly revenue and average monthly expenses increased slightly compared to the previous report. The increase in revenue was due to an increased customer base, notably Yep.com, while the increase in expenses was mainly related to expanding the team. However, due primarily to a one-time accounting expense in May for previously-capitalised development costs, this report shows a net loss of $756k. Projections for the fiscal year 2023-2024 are that profitability will more than offset this reported loss. In other developments during this reporting period, adjustments to the LLC Operating agreement have also been made to reaffirm its status as wholly owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, and new beta software features have been released.

Revenue
During fiscal year (FY) 2022-2023, total revenue for Wikimedia Enterprise was $3.2 million – representing 1.8% of the Wikimedia Foundation’s total revenue for the period. This revenue has previously been reported within the 2022-23 Wikimedia Foundation audit report.²

Search engine Yep.com has now also become a customer of Wikimedia Enterprise. Yep.com is a privacy-centred search engine that shares advertising revenue with the publishers of the searched content. The relationship with Yep.com underscores Wikimedia Enterprise’s commitment to the principles of ensuring equal access to the APIs services for both large and small organisations – levelling the playing field for commercial reuse of Wikimedia data. 

Predictions for the current fiscal year indicate new revenue to greater the one-time expenses reported within this financial period, and will be declared in the next edition of this report.

Expenses
Total Wikimedia Enterprise expenses (including cost of services) during FY 2022-2023 were $4.0 million. As illustrated in figure 1 below on a month-by-month basis expenses fluctuated slightly above or slightly below revenue, with one exception. In May, a one-time accounting expense of $463 thousand was incurred to impair³ previously capitalized software development costs for Wikimedia Enterprise v1 software. This software initially had been capitalized with an expected useful life of three years, the standard life for Wikimedia’s software development costs; however the software was replaced early by v2 and thus the remaining capitalized cost for v1 was expensed during FY 2022-2023 (sixteen months early).

Compared to the previous Wikimedia Enterprise financial report, monthly expenses also increased slightly due to increased headcount of the team to 11.5 full-time-equivalent employees (up from 8.5 at the end of 2022). A breakdown of expenses by type are shown in the table below.

Financial performance detail for FY 2022-2023

Revenue (Subscription & Prof. Services)	$3,220k
Cost of Services	$1,446k
Internet Hosting Charges	$261k
Software Amortization	$757k
Customer Support	$428k
Gross Profits	$1,774k
Operating Expenses	$2,531k
Staffing Costs	$1,196k
Prof. Services and Contractors	$722k
Other Operating Expenses (Incl. 15% Overhead Charge)	$613k
Net Profit (Loss) Before Tax	$(756)k

The Wikimedia Foundation incurs costs which are eligible for capitalization (expensing the value of an asset over its useful life, rather than all at once) – primarily personnel expenses and outside professional service costs for software development.⁴ The amount capitalized for Wikimedia Enterprise was about $1.3 million at the end of FY 2022-2023, of which $88,000 has been amortized (depreciated) so far.

A comprehensive explanation of the legal and taxation structure of Wikimedia Enterprise is given within the first financial report and remains unchanged. If you have any other questions please consult the project’s FAQ (legal, financial) or ask on the relevant talkpage.
_____

Other
A small but noteworthy administrative change since the previous annual report is an adjustment by the LLC’s Board to the Operating Agreement which governs Wikimedia Enterprise’s activities. In response to community suggestions, the agreement was updated to reaffirm existing policy and formally prohibit a transfer of the WMF’s interest in the LLC to any third party or to add any other members. The specific changes are documented on the project talkpage.

Finally, while financial updates are published annually technical updates are published quarterly on the project’s MediaWiki page. Notable recent additions over the previous quarter include two new beta features within the API suite:

• Breaking news (FAQ) – announced in TechNews
• Structured Contents endpoint (FAQ) – announced in a blogpost

You can read about these features’ purpose, technical design, and methods for how to access them at the above links.

---

1. 1 July 2022 – 30 June 2023 ↩︎
2. Footnote 1(n), page 10. ↩︎
3. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) Subtopic 350-40-35-1 through 3, Intangibles – Goodwill and Other – Internal Use Software – Subsequent Measurement – Impairment. Compared to the previous Wikimedia Enterprise financial report, monthly expenses also increased slightly due to increased headcount of the team to 11.5 full-time-equivalent employees (up from 8.5 at the end of 2022). A breakdown of expenses by type are shown in the table below. ↩︎
4. ASC Subtopic 350-40, Intangibles – Goodwill and Other – Internal Use Software ↩︎