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(Alliance News) - Darktrace PLC on Tuesday upgraded its annual sales guidance after reporting "significant" growth over the first six months of its financial year.
The Cambridge-based cybersecurity firm, which was demoted from the FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250 last month, said it expects revenue for the first half that ended December 31 to be at least USD190 million, reflecting year-on-year growth of over 50%.
In a turbulent half-year period that saw Darktrace's share price swing wildly, the company pointed to having grown its customer base by 40% annually to 6,531 customers, demonstrating the "power of its business model".
Shares surged 20% to 473.01 pence in London on Tuesday morning. Darktrace had listed on the Main Market at 250p back in April so is up nearly 90% since.
Financial second quarter sales had been better than expected, Darktrace highlighted, both because of strong new customer acquisition and improvements in customer retention rates.
"I am very pleased that we have continued to deliver strong growth across our customer base, annual recurring revenue and revenue in the first half of financial year 2022," commented Chief Finance Officer Cathy Graham.
"We also achieved our aim of driving improvement in churn and net ARR retention rates over the past six months by leveraging our customer success team and focusing on upsell programmes."
By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com
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