The Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) share price has fallen more than 6% in response to a business update at the company’s annual general meeting.
Appen provides data for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Basically, it provides and improves data for the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning products. With more than 20 years of experience in over 130 countries, Appen has firmly established itself as a global leader in this space.
Appen’s Update
Appen reminded investors that it has been operating in its key core expertise for over a decade, having added search relevance expertise in 2007 when it was working with leading tech companies.
The company also said that strategic acquisitions over the past three years have positioned Appen to support client needs for high levels of data security and large volumes of data.
Appen said that it is strongly positioned and continues to execute in a high growth market, with Appen’s core business performing well and Figure Eight meeting expectations.
As a reminder, Figure Eight was described as the best in class machine learning software platform which uses highly automated annotation tools to transform unstructured text, imagine, audio and video data into customised high quality artificial intelligence training data. The initial acquisition cost was US$175 million.
Appen revealed that year to date revenue plus orders in hand including Figure Eight for delivery in 2019 was approximately $270 million at mid-May 2019.
The company’s full year underlying EBITDA (click here to learn what EBITDA means) for the year ending 31 December 2019 including Figure Eight is currently forecast to be in the range of $85 million to $90 million at an exchange rate of AUD$1 to US$0.74. This compares to the underlying EBITDA of $71.3 million in FY18.
That means, even with Figure Eight, underlying EBITDA is expected to grow by 19% to 26% which is also affected on a per-share basis by the issue of more shares for the acquisition.
I can understand why the Appen share price is down in response to this update, but Appen is still predicting solid growth. But, I wouldn’t want to buy its shares at the current share price. I would rather buy one of the global growth shares in the free report below.
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