Nixu lowers its guidance of revenue growth for 2019 – Growth about 25%
Nixu Corporation, Press release, November 25, 2019, at 1:55 PM EET
Cybersecurity company Nixu announced earlier today changes to its financial guidance with a stock exchange release.
Nixu lowers its guidance of revenue growth for the year 2019. This is due to the stronger weakening of estimated revenue growth of Nixu’s business operations. The main causes vary in different business operations from a slowdown of a significant cybersecurity partnership, delay of multiple substantial digital identity assignments to delay of estimated technology resell deals. Simultaneously as economic uncertainty grows, the number of recruitments has been lower than planned. Especially in markets outside Finland, customer uncertainty due to the general economic situation can be seen when starting new projects.
The decrease in revenue will have an impact on the EDITBA, which will be negative in H2/2019.
New guidance for 2019:
Nixu continues to emphasize the importance of growth and continues to invest heavily in growth projects. Supported by strong organic growth and the completed acquisitions, Nixu estimates its revenue to grow approximately 25% from the previous financial year. The full year EBITDA is estimated to improve from the previous financial year without any possible readjustment costs.
Previous guidance for 2019:
Nixu continues to emphasize the importance of growth and continues to invest heavily in growth projects. Supported by strong organic growth and the completed acquisitions, Nixu estimates its revenue to grow approximately 35% from the previous financial year. The full year EBITDA is estimated to improve significantly from the previous financial year.
Additional investor call on November 25, 2019, at 5 pm EET
Nixu will organize an additional investor call on the topic of financial guidance change. Petri Kairinen, Nixu CEO will be hosting the session and answer investor questions. Registration for the event by email: nixu.communications@nixu.com. Further information will be sent to the participants.
Nixu CEO, Petri Kairinen:
“I’m sorry that our forecasted business growth pace weakens so rapidly during the second half of 2019. Typically, in our business, some business areas, in turn, exceed their forecasts, while others may fall short. Now we have experienced a situation where we have fallen behind our forecast across the board. The fast decline surprised us in a way that is not acceptable. We will estimate our forecast system and increase the number of underlying indicators significantly.
Now it is essential to take care that Nixu’s growth pace continues and that our growth will be profitable. In 2018, we took measures to stabilize our profitability and these resulted in good results during the first half of 2019. Unfortunately, we concentrated too heavily on the long-term strategy and the preparatory measures. This led to the weakening of operational functions during the second half.
However, we are moving towards the year 2020 with confidence. The growth drivers created by digitalization have remained unchanged and therefore I believe that Nixu has everything needed to achieve its long-term growth targets. Also, it is worth noticing that Nixu hasn’t lost any significant customers (in addition to the previously reported) or lost more deals than normally. Simultaneously, our strategic focus area managed continuous services has continued to grow strongly. Based on this, I believe, that our competitiveness continues to be in good shape.
In 2020, the focus will be on ensuring profitable growth, internationally in particular. We will seek permanent profitable growth with the following measures we have already begun:
1) sharpening of sales efforts, 2) harmonization of the range of services offered in different market areas, 3) closer monitoring of recruitment and consultation utilization rates. We will still look separately at the intangible assets of the balance sheet and possibly write off some of them. In addition, reorganizations aimed at improving efficiency may incur one-off costs for this year. Next year we will continue to strive strong growth in line with our strategy but securing a profitability base is our top priority.”
Nixu Corporation announced its growth ambitions, for the years 2020 to 2024, on August 28, 2019. The change in the 2019 financial guidance will not affect these growth ambitions.
Nixu Corporation
Further information:
Chief Executive Officer Petri Kairinen, Nixu Corporation
telephone +358 40 832 1832, e-mail: petri.kairinen@nixu.com
Distribution:
Principal media
www.nixu.com
Nixu in Brief:
Nixu is a cybersecurity services company on a mission to keep the digital society running. Our passion is to help organizations embrace digitalization securely. Partnering with our clients we provide practical solutions for ensuring business continuity, an easy access to digital services and data protection. We aim to provide the best workplace to our team of about 400 cybersecurity professionals with a hands-on attitude. With Nordic roots we serve enterprise clients worldwide. Nixu shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.
www.nixu.com