Shares in the Group dove 26% with news Revenues fell from £10m to £4.8m while Gross Profit fell from £5.3m to £2.1m.
Companies: Celebrus Technologies PLC
Data solutions company D4T4 Solutions (LON: D4T4) has announced its half-year report which has seen the stock tumble as a result of the poor start to FY18.
Shares dove 26% in early trading with the news Group Revenues fell from £10m to £4.8m while Gross Profit took a similar turn, falling from £5.3m in H1 17 to £2.1m in H1 18. The Group also swung to a Net Loss of £0.4m in the period, down from the £2.1m Net Profit of H1 16.
Management flagged "the timing of client contracts" as the cause for the lacklustre figures. Confident in its H2 outlook, it went on to say...
"Several major private cloud and analytics platform modernisation projects are anticipated to close in this third quarter. This significantly enhances the opportunity for strong second half revenue which underpins our confidence of achieving management's expectations for the full year."
Despite the downturn, an Interim dividend of 0.6p per share will be issued, a 14% increase on H1 17's Interim dividend.
Corporate broker finnCap chimed in on the results in its note today, saying:
"The H1 results will come as a shock to investors; however, unusual contract phasing is causing extreme H2 weighting (20:80) in FY 2018 and – consistent with company guidance – we are maintaining our forecasts.... The surprisingly weak H1 leaves £18.5m revenue and £5.1m adj. PBT required in H2, compared with £7.6m and £2.1m respectively LY."
Commenting on the "aggressive but achievable" second half, finnCap also said:
"Whilst this weighting is beyond most businesses, D4t4 has a swift delivery process; licences are booked on signing and it takes 6-8 weeks from a project signing to delivery. It has an impressive pipeline (est. at 3x or 4x the 14 deals in closure) and strong drivers in data collection and management (2 large deals are compliance-driven) as well as a blue-chip customer base; most of the 14 contracts follow on from existing business. We understand c.£3.5m will be closed by the end of this month, with £15m visible."
The Group is forecast to make c. £4.7m Adjusted PBT from £23m in Revenues for the full year, representing relatively flat Profit growth, 35% Revenue growth and a forecast price to earnings multiple of 15x.
