AVST.L Share News (AVST)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Cybersecurity firm Avast PLC on Wednesday affirmed its 2018 guidance after posting good revenue and billings growth in the first half of the year.

Avast, which joined the London Stock Exchange in May, reported adjusted figures for the six months to June.

Adjusted billings comprises billings plus Piriform's billings for the period from January 1 to July 17 last year prior to its acquisition by Avast, while adjusted revenue is revenue adjusted for a deferred revenue haircut reversal, a gross-up adjustment, and adding Piriform.

On a reported basis, Avast's revenue rose 32% to USD388.6 million, with adjusted revenue up 5.4% to USD403.3 million.

Billings increased 10% on a reported basis to USD430.2 million, with adjusted billings climbing 7.6% to USD430.2 million.

Avast has swung to a pretax profit of USD75.4 million for the period, having posted a USD45.8 million loss a year ago - the swing is due to higher revenue as well as a swing to a USD14.3 million currency gain after a USD30.5 million loss a year prior.

These results include Avast's discontinued toolbar-related search distribution business. Excluding this, and including foreign exchange, adjusted billings rose 12% to USD421.2 million and adjusted revenue by 9.8% to USD394.3 million.

Avast is not paying an interim dividend, but it plans to pay a final dividend for 2018, with dividends set to be at around 40% of levered cash flow.

Avast said performance was in line with expectations, and it is affirming its full year guidance save for a slight increase in the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation margin which is now expected to be flat year-on-year for 2018.

Consumer billings rose 14% excluding discontinued operations but including foreign exchange to USD391.1 million, while small to medium business billings were down 11% to USD30.1 million.

Avast's key performance indicators include customer numbers, with rose 2.6% from December to 11.7 million, as well as average products per customer which increased 3% to 1.4 and average revenue per customer which was up 3.5% to USD46.92.

Chief Executive Vincent Steckler said: "I'm pleased to report our first set of results since our initial public offering earlier this year indicate the group is performing strongly with sustained high growth, in line with market expectations, and with slightly higher Ebitda levels.

"Looking ahead, we are confident we can continue to execute the strategy we outlined at IPO and we are on track to deliver on full year guidance of high single digit revenue growth, with slight Ebitda margin improvement."

Avast shares were 3.4% higher on Wednesday morning at 237.35 pence each.