As usual, @Noddy74 did a great job commenting on the outcome, and shared very valid points on today’s announcements. Rather than rehash, I’ll add a few complementary thoughts; 

1. I think what’s happened with Xref’s reporting will serve as interesting preview for the upcoming full year reporting period; investors are likely to be brutal if companies don’t overdeliver. 
2. Anyone that’s worked in a fast growing startup knows how bloody difficult (sometimes impossible) it becomes to continue to beat your last quarter when your growing like crazy. That’s true even if seasonality should be working in your favour. Investors (myself included), expected even better results from Xref. In the grand scheme of things, 35% YoY growth with the positive cash flow momentum continuing to pick up is a win for me. 
3. Fancy new branding. I’m a big fan. 
4. Now let’s see if they can generate some actual results from these pulse surveys and exit interviews. The opportunity here is large, although very competitive, very keen to see if they can make something of this in the next 6 months. 

Disc: Held. 

A big thanks to @Noddy74 for putting this stock on my radar in October last year. 

I’ve been following the business since and had the feeling I may have missed the boat on a great opportunity: the share price kept moving upwards and the valuation seemed like it was approaching slightly screeched levels to me. 

However, we’ve since had a double-whammy:

1. The business in my opinion is performing even better than expected, even with high expectation. Nearly 100% growth in recent half. We have to keep in mind that some businesses had easier compares given they were largely affected by Covid last year, whereas Xref’s last year results were strong (37% growth). This 2 year average growth of 55% is very impressive. 
2. The market still punished it like all other fast growing small caps in the recent carnage. As Noddy mentions, perhaps this is likely also from declaring a small loss rather than a small profit on an earnings basis. The market today seems laser focused on money making businesses. I am not concerned with this however given cash flow was positive and the loss was not substantial enough to warrant a fear of a capital raise; my thesis is that they will remain in the positive territory and will not need to tap investors to keep growing (outside of acquisitions…). 

Hence I took the opportunity to jump on board.