Aug 1, 2019

London-headquartered digital resilience firm Shearwater Group saw its FY19 revenue almost quadruple to £23.5m, with the acquisitions of Brookcourt Solutions and GeoLang estimated to have added roughly £16m of turnover to the total (a £7.4m deal for Secarma’s penetration testing assets will contribute to FY20). By our calculations, that leaves AIM-listed Shearwater with around £1.3m of organic growth, which would be a healthy 21% up on the previous year. The underlying EBITDA loss expanded to £1.4m from £800k in FY18 however, largely down to expenses and operating costs associated with projects within its Xcina Consulting business which have now been removed. Pre-tax losses too ballooned to £6.9m compared to £2.8m in FY18. Management pointed to organic growth within its SecurEnvoy identity access management (IAM) solutions business which we guess contributed the majority (if not all) of its £3.9m of Group software revenue (up £500k on FY18). The GeoLang data loss prevention (DLP) unit made an EBITDA loss, which Shearwater hopes will be reversed in FY20 after being awarded its first enterprise license under the UK government’s G Cloud framework and a contract with software firm Alfresco. The remainder of Group revenue (£19.6m, up from £2.8m in FY19) came from services and most of that from the Brookcourt acquisition, the addition of which “materially transformed” the company said Shearwater Group chairman David Williams. There was a c£900k contribution from Xcina Consluting too which won 18 new customers in the period. The primary challenges for FY20 will be to fully integrate the PenTest acquisition with other parts of the Group to maximise upselling opportunities, whilst simultaneously reducing EBITDA losses to lay a foundation for future profitability. Other acquisitions remain on the cards though, and we wouldn't be surprised to see Shearwater make strategic buys that extend its cyber security product/service portfolio and customer base even further in the near future.