The Nuix Ltd (ASX: NXL) share price has plunged 17% after giving a FY24 first half update.
This company provides investigative analytics and intelligence software, helping clients “solve many of their complex data challenges.” Examples include criminal investigations, financial crime, litigation support and other investigations.
Profit expectations for HY24
Nuix revealed that it’s expecting annualised contract value (ACV) growth of between 15% to 17%, to between $196 million to $199 million.
Statutory revenue is expected to grow between 10% to 13% to a range of $96 million to $99 million. The company explained revenue shows a “greater degree of variability” than ACV because of how its financial accounts show multi-year deals. The proportion of multi-year deals is lower this time than the prior year.
The company has a goal of (at least) around 10% growth for ACV and statutory revenue in constant foreign exchange rate terms.
Underlying EBITDA (EBITDA explained) is expected to grow by between 8% to 16%, taking it to between $27 million to $29 million. This excludes “non-operational” legal costs and includes Topos expenses. Profit growth is usually an important factor for the Nuix share price, or any business.
However, statutory EBITDA is projected by the company to fall by between 9% to 19%, to a range of $17 million and $19 million. This is being impacted by legal costs relating to the ASIC Federal Court hearing. For the half, non-operational legal expenses amounted to approximately $10 million, compared to $2.4 million in the prior year.
Thankfully, legal costs are expected to be “significantly lower” in the second half of FY24.
Nuix said the rollout of Nuix Neo, a platform offering all of Nuix’s capabilities, and associated solutions to early adopters “is occurring as planned”.
Cash flow
The company said it’s continuing its strategy of funding software development costs from free cash flow. It generated positive underlying cash flow in the first half and wants positive cash flow to continue in the second half.
It finished December 2023 with $24 million cash on hand and no debt.
Final thoughts on the Nuix share price
It is a sizeable fall today, but keep in mind it is up over 120% in the last six months. Sometimes the market will get too excited in the short-term about an ASX share.
I don’t know enough about this business to say if it’s good value or not. But, it seems to be on a path of underlying financial growth and recovery from a painful start to ASX life.
There are other ASX growth shares I’d rather buy though.
