The Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) share price is dropping heavily after the ASX tech share announced its 2021 half-year result.
Appen’s HY21 result
The technology company reported that group revenue was down 2% to $196.6 million. This was due to lower global services revenue as global customers allocated resources to new, non-advertising projects in the first half of 2021.
But there were elements of growth. Global product revenue was up 15.2% to $22.3 million, as global customers invested in new AI use cases supported by Appen’s annotation platform and tools.
New markets revenue grew 31.5% to $47.8 million, driven by China, new enterprise customer wins and product-led growth.
During the half year announcement, it revealed the acquisition calledQ uadrant, a global leader in mobile location and point of interest data, extending its product offering.
The gross profit margin was lower due to customer and project mix, as large legacy project volume growth slowed and early-stage projects commenced.
After showing those positive growth numbers, Appen revealed that underlying EBITDA (EBITDA explained) fell 14.3% to $27.7 million. Appen said that the decline was due to the fully annualised impact of FY20 growth investments and HY21 investment in new markets.
It also registered a charge of $2.3 million to reflect restructuring costs.
Underlying net profit was down 35% to $12.5 million because of the decline in EBITDA and increased amortisation from the investment in product development.
Statutory profit dropped 55.1% to $6.7 million.
Balance sheet and dividend
Appen said it had no debt and a cash balance of $66 million at the end of the half year period.
The board decided to pay an interim dividend of 4.5 cents per share, the same as last year.
Outlook for Appen and the share price
Appen said the planned investment in Quadrant product and market expansion will reduce the full year underlying EBITDA guidance of $83 million to $90 million by $2 million to a range of $81 million to $88 million. The full year EBITDA is expected to be at the low end of this range.
Year to date revenue plus orders in hand for delivery is approximately $360 million at August 2021, which is 10% higher than the August 2020 guidance of $328 million which was 79% of full year 2020 revenue.
The forecast is supported by a stronger order book, higher confidence in the pipeline, and the expected second half revenue skew, weighted to the fourth quarter, due to customers’ delivery schedule for e-commerce, digital advertising and search programs.
Appen’s gross profit margin is expected to improve in the second half, consistent with FY20, due to higher revenue, and the customer and project mix.
There will be “moderate” expense growth in the second half. Restructure-related cost savings of approximately $15 million are expected in FY22 and will be mostly re-invested for growth.
The Appen share price has dropped significantly over the last year. I’m not sure the previous growth rates can come back. There seems to be both client and competitor impacts. But opportunistic investors may see an opportunity.
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