3rd Mar 2022 11:40
(Alliance News) - Shares in Darktrace PLC surged on Thursday after it upped its revenue guidance as all geographic markets and customer sizes experienced healthy growth in the first half of its financial year.
The artificial intelligence cybersecurity firm's shares were up 14% to 525.18 pence each in London on Thursday.
The Cambridge, England-headquartered firm posted pretax profit in the six months to December 31 of USD7.4 million, swinging from a USD47.9 million loss the year before.
This came on the back of a 52% rise in revenue to USD192.6 million from USD126.5 million.
"Scale efficiencies created by a multi-year contract model continued to drive improvement across all earnings measures", Darktrace said.
"Operating expense growth remained below expectations largely because travel and entertainment, and return to office-related expenses, while increasing, have been doing so at a slower than planned rate. Consistent with its stated goal of expanding core research and product development capacity, however, Darktrace continued to increase its investment in R&D during the period."
Darktrace upped its full-year guidance. It now expects an increase in constant currency accounting rate of return of between 38.5% and 40%, higher than the previously announced range of 37% to 38.5%.
Driven in part by these increased ARR expectations, Darktrace now expects revenue growth of between 44.5% and 46.5% in financial 2021. This was previously set between 42% and 44%. Revenue for the previous financial year came in at USD281.3 million.
"This increase is also partly driven by lower than previously predicted forecasts for foreign exchange headwinds, which accelerates the conversion of constant currency ARR to US dollar denominated revenue," the company said.
Darktrace pays no dividend. However, back in December, it announced plans for a GBP30 million share buyback scheme in 2022.
By Greg Roxburgh; [email protected]
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