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22 Jun 2023
First Take: NCC Group - Not pretty, but share price implying doomsday

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First Take: NCC Group - Not pretty, but share price implying doomsday
NCC Group plc (NCC:LON) | 143 -0.6 (-0.3%) | Mkt Cap: 450.4m
- Published:
22 Jun 2023 -
Author:
Julian Yates | Roger Phillips -
Pages:
4 -
FY23 in-line with the lowered targets
FY23 EBITA seen as £28.5m, in line with the £28m-£32m guidance range at the last profit warning. We are at £28.7m and FactSet consensus is £28.6m. Net debt of c£50m ex finance leases is in line with our forecast. Overall Cyber Security FY23 revenue was in line with FY22, with 10% H223 decline vs H123 11% growth cc, mainly due to the declines from the US client base as previously alluded to. Global Professional Services declined 16% in H2 with Managed Services seeing 14% growth. In Software Resilience growth of 0.6% cc in H223 was up from the -1.6% H1 decline, with quarterly progression and price rises coming through. Of the £5m strategic investment planned for FY23, £2.5m was realised and the remainder deferred into FY24.
Outlook for modest profit growth should be taken well versus where the share price is
While trading is clearly challenging, and there is a lot of change required and being pushed through the business, an overall ambition for profit growth in FY24 should be taken well, even if not fully achieved. We suspect it may be a little over ambitious, considering the weak H223 exit rates in Cyber Security and the dynamics / timescales of recovering profit levels in an IT Services business operating in challenging market conditions. However, with a number of new senior leadership hires now in place, the company sees £10m of cost efficiency in Cyber Security, of which £5m should be in FY24, to help offset the £6m of strategic investment planned; with a strong strategic focus now on the business, this sets an overall encouraging tone versus what the share price is implying, in our view. In Software Resilience it is encouraging that low single digit growth is being targeted and the business is regaining some momentum. While the sale process has been paused for now, if traction continues this should preserve value and act as a valuation catalyst in due course.
View – difficult to see how value cannot be realised from current level
While the business is in a challenging position, we see the share price factoring in worse, and struggle to see how value cannot be realised ahead, as conditions stabilise. Assuming an eventual £250m price tag for Software Resilience, this implies c10x EBTIA for Cyber Security on depressed earnings levels which we see as too pessimistic. We place our forecasts and TP U/R.