The Citadel Group Ltd (ASX: CGL) share price is down 7% after the software business announced its FY20 report today.
Citadel’s FY20 result
Citadel announced that total underlying revenue rose by 29.4% to $128.4 million. That includes 35.7% software growth to $47.5 million and 26.7% growth to $80.1 million.
Gross profit jumped by 24% to $55.8 million with the gross profit margin falling 1.9% (190 basis points) to 43.5%. The gross profit margin excluding Noventus improved 3.4% (340 basis points) to 48.8%.
Underlying EBITDA (click here to learn what EBITDA means
) went up 25.3% to $29.2 million, with the EBITDA margin dropped 0.8% (80 basis points) to 22.7%.
However, the company recognised a number of restructuring costs and revenue changes meant statutory total revenue only went up 23.1% to $122.1 million, statutory gross profit grew 13.1% to $50.9 million and statutory EBITDA actually dropped 27.5% to $16.8 million.
Synergies and a full year of revenue with the Wellbeing acquisition should help earnings in FY21. Wellbeing is a UK healthcare software business.
Reported net profit was a $2 million loss due to the revenue changes and acquisition, integration and restructuring costs.
Balance sheet and dividend
At the end of FY20 it had $32.5 million of cash and debt of $86.5 million due to the Wellbeing acquisition.
Citadel declared a final dividend of 6 cents per share, the same as last year. That brought the total dividend to 10.8 cents per share, the same as last year.
Outlook
Citadel is targeting organic revenue growth from the software division of 15% or more over the long term and organic growth from the services division of 5% to 10%.
Its ‘large and qualified’ pipeline of opportunities is now more than $800 million, 90% of which is software in nature. Citadel also revealed it has an acquisition pipeline focused on “scalable software opportunities that build on our current capabilities”.
Over FY21 the company is looking to cross-sell its health software, retain its core contracts, win new contracts and expand into new verticals like contraction, local government and health facilities contracts.
I think Citadel is a very promising business. ASX growth shares that can generate the best growth usually have some international expansion growth, which Citadel has. The fact that it offers software means that it should be able to steadily grow its profit margins over time. I’d be happy to buy Citadel shares for the long term today. I also like software business Pushpay Holdings Ltd (ASX: PPH).
