Yahoo Finance Darktrace shares surge on growth forecast
Shares in Darktrace (DARK.L), the British cybersecurity company that floated in April, were up 2% on Wednesday morning as it announced a strong performance in the second half of the 2021 financial year.
This comes two weeks after three early investors in the company sold around 25 million shares, following the firm's strong rise in value since it went public. The company's shares have increased more than 150% since its initial public offering (IPO) but the move by KKR (KKR), Balderton Capital, and Summit caused its stock to slump.
Darktrace's CFO Cathy Graham said the firm grew its customer base as well as revenue, and remains “focused on empowering organisations to interrupt cyber threats, before they experience a business disruption, using our leading self-learning AI technology.”
She said the company has updated its guidance on revenue growth “due to a smaller-than-expected impact from foreign exchange headwinds in the first quarter."
The FTSE 250 (^FTMC) company's customer base is now 5,975, up 42.7% year-on-year.
Revenue for Q1 FY 2022 was $93m (£68m), up 50.8% compared to this time last year.
“During the latter part of the quarter, the US dollar strengthened against key international currencies, primarily pound sterling and the euro, creating foreign exchange headwinds,” the company explained.
“The impact of these headwinds on revenue recognised in the full quarter was, however, at the lower end of Darktrace's estimates for the period,” it added.
Read more: Darktrace stock slumps as early investors sell shares of £187m
Given this, Darktrace is now expecting year-over-year revenue growth of between 37% and 39%, when previously it had said it was expecting it to be 35% to 37%.
It forecasts 47% to 48% of annual revenue will be recognised in the first half of the financial year.
Earlier this week, Darktrace said it had achieved a new recognition from Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its serverless architecture and cloud-native capabilities.
Following a technical Review, AWS accredited Darktrace technology with an official "Reviewed by AWS" badge.
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