Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

APX - Appen Limited

Jump to new
System

System

Joined
27 June 2010
Posts
3,863
Reactions
215
Appen is a language technology and data solutions provider that has a services capability in more than 140 languages and dialects. Appen offers large scale training data, linguistic models and consulting services to assist leading technology companies and government agencies in the development of internet and mobile connected products including:
  • search relevance optimisation;
  • speech recognition or speech synthesisers; and
  • security and intelligence.
http://www.appen.com
 
skc

skc

Goldmember
Joined
12 August 2008
Posts
8,277
Reactions
328
fanger said:
Does anyone own this? I thought it reported well but the market didn't like it.
Click to expand...

Yes I hold some of these.

Yes I agree that the report seems to be on par with most expectations. I think the market didn't like it because of the deterioration in margin (as flagged). Even though the demand for it's service is growing, the decrease in margin potentially signal more competition - and so makes one wonder if APX has a strong enough moat to defend its market share and sustain the growth required to justify it's relatively high PE. Mind you it hasn't been smashed or anything (it's no ISD or ACX) - it's simply still trading within the range in the last 6 month.

There's a macro theme of de-rating high-PE stock and APX has had it's run last year when the small cap growth stocks were the darlings of the market. They are now coming back a few notches as a cohert.

At $2.50-2.60, APX trades on ~22x PE. This isn't a very high number for a company targeting mid-high-teen growth. APX's main business is still relatively new to the market - so it might take some more time for the market to fully accept that it has truely sustainable growth. There's also the annual contract renewal risk that won't go away until April.

The founder/directors were selling in bunches (at prices well below current price) earlier and that took me a huge amount of conviction (or perhaps ignorance) to hold through that. Thankfully that has now abated but I'd keep a close eye on that.

So in a nutshell. I don't think there's too much to be alarmed about. The long term competitive dynamics will need to be monitored (or perhaps more actively researched by looking at competitors, client announcements etc). The market valuation will rise and fall... and perhaps unloading some positions when it rises >30x would have been prudent.
 
H

herzy

Joined
14 April 2012
Posts
315
Reactions
1
How do you value something like this SKC? I find it very difficult to separate crap from gold in tech stuff. It sounds a bit like you're looking more at growth and metrics rather than a belief in the underlying technology?
 
qldfrog

qldfrog

Joined
8 June 2008
Posts
10,351
Reactions
13,771
ok working today, i participated; offer is at lower of $5.80 or 2% discount weighted average etc.....
 
qldfrog

qldfrog

Joined
8 June 2008
Posts
10,351
Reactions
13,771
seems i was too early the biller id was different and did not accept any fund when i first tried (and sent my first email); the day after, all was good...
so all sorted out
 
F

fanger

Joined
9 September 2010
Posts
209
Reactions
14
wow I managed to get a whole 61 shares in the SPP. I wonder how long its going to take to get the rest of my money back off them.
 
F

fanger

Joined
9 September 2010
Posts
209
Reactions
14
qldfrog said:
229 when asking for $15k....if I remember well; got money back already
Click to expand...

I had the money deposited back into my account on the 23rd. Most other times I've gone into a SPP I've had a cheque sent back to me for the remainder of the money not used which is a pain in the arse. I have to give credit to APX for the speedy return of my funds.
 
greggles

greggles

I'll be back!
Joined
28 July 2004
Posts
4,119
Reactions
3,698
There's not many stocks out there like Appen Limited. It has consistently outperformed over the last three years and in that time its share price has increased from around 50c to $10.55, which it closed at today after releasing its Full Year 2017 results.

Here are the details:

• Total revenue of $166.6M up 50% or 55% in constant currency
• Underlying EBITDA of $28.1M up 62%, statutory EBITDA of $22.2M up 29%
• Underlying NPAT of $19.7M up 86%, statutory NPAT of $14.3M up 36%
• Underlying EBITDA margin improvement from 15.6% in 2016 to 16.9% in 2017
• Strong cash conversion (75% of EBITDA)
• Full year underlying EBITDA for the financial year 2018, ending December 31st 2018, is currently forecast in the range of $50M-$55M (at A$1 = US$0.80)

The relentless high revenue growth continues unabated.

Here's the three year chart:

big.chart.APX.gif


A dream stock. Has anyone out there ridden this one all the way up?
 
Caveman 28

Caveman 28

Joined
29 November 2017
Posts
34
Reactions
11
greggles said:
There's not many stocks out there like Appen Limited. It has consistently outperformed over the last three years and in that time its share price has increased from around 50c to $10.55, which it closed at today after releasing its Full Year 2017 results.

Here are the details:

• Total revenue of $166.6M up 50% or 55% in constant currency
• Underlying EBITDA of $28.1M up 62%, statutory EBITDA of $22.2M up 29%
• Underlying NPAT of $19.7M up 86%, statutory NPAT of $14.3M up 36%
• Underlying EBITDA margin improvement from 15.6% in 2016 to 16.9% in 2017
• Strong cash conversion (75% of EBITDA)
• Full year underlying EBITDA for the financial year 2018, ending December 31st 2018, is currently forecast in the range of $50M-$55M (at A$1 = US$0.80)

The relentless high revenue growth continues unabated.

Here's the three year chart:

View attachment 86349

A dream stock. Has anyone out there ridden this one all the way up?
Click to expand...

I have ridden it for the past 7 months. :)
 

Similar threads

Dividend
Ultimate Acronym List (UAL)
Replies
0
Views
4K
Dividend
Dividend
Top