Forum Topics APX APX Who are all holding or buying and what are you reasons/rationalization?
Dino
Added 5 years ago

Would love to hear about why you hold or buying or selling?

I'm holding and below are the reasons

1. Strong tailwinds and need for "quality" data for the next 5 or 10 years. 

2. More employees than the others with help in annotation

3. Recent acquisition yet to play out. 

 

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Rapstar
Added 5 years ago

As a counter point, I sold (I never actually held them in my Strawman P/F because I never saw a good opportunity to buy in). I have lost confidence in management for the following reasons: 1) They fudged EBITDA number on the half year results (as they has a habit of doing), to exclude chinese marketing expenses among others (LOL). With these costs thrown, in EBITA was virtually flat. 2) In late August, they forecast strong tailwinds, with COVID-19 accelerating digital transformation. But it hasn't turned out that way. Why? Management say the sales cycle has lengthened, and/or clients working from home are less productive. 3) They knew in October that they would not meet guidance, but only reported the bad news yesterday - Meanwhile the share price tanked 25% since early November (insider information perhaps leaked? - Plenty of time for this to occur). Appen may recover and do well from here. But I am not sticking around in the hope they do. Looking at EBITDA growth trends: 2017: $28 M 2018: $68.1 M (Up 154%) 2019: $87.9 (up 29%) 2020: up 2%???? pre-COVID-19, EBITDA grew 29%, including the dilutionary Figure-8 acquisition. All this management talk of underlying or adjusted EBITDA - Is it just a smoke screen? I dunno, but in my mind, the weight of probability is falling over to the wrong side of the equation, and the EBITDA growth rate trend is heading in the wrong direction. I consider Appen a turnaround investment now. I hope it works out for you all, but I am not sticking around to find out when there are other businesses that are executing, aren't fudging results, grow organically, and report changes when they become aware. Sean

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