Shearwater reveals pandemic providing 'opportunities for expansion' in trading update

Fellow AIM-listed firm Adept optimistic about COVID-19 challenges in own update but declined to make a forecast for its crrent year

AIM-listed Shearwater Group is seeing new opportunities to "expand its reach" as a result of the economic uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The cybersecurity provider made the comments in a pre-close trading update, where it also reported its expectations of unaudited EBITDA to be in excess of £3m for its year ending 31 March 2020, in comparison to a loss of £1.4m in its previous financial year.

Chairman David Williams said that it wanted to update shareholders on the news "as quickly as possible after the year end" due to the current economic uncertainty.

"Thanks to the efforts of our highly experienced team, we have been able to produce an impressive result with a substantial swing from an EBITDA loss to profit and notably strong cash generation," he stated.

"The world is recalibrating, and it is impossible to predict with certainty the impact of the surreal events experienced since the COVID-19 appeared in our lives.

"We have always maintained that data and organisational resilience is one of the few areas in which growth is more or less assured. Also, the current uncertainties are providing us with interesting opportunities to expand our reach at attractive valuations."

He added that Shearwater's software division has seen "significantly higher levels" of activity as a result of the increased amount of people working from home which it says makes it confident for the year ahead.

Fellow AIM-listed firm AdEPT also posted a positive trading update for its year ending 31 March 2020 but declined to provide guidance for its current year ending 31 March 2021 due to the disruption caused by the disease.

It will cancel the £1.2m interim dividend which is due for payment this month "in the interests of prudence" and cautioned that it may not pay a final dividend for the recently finished fiscal year. It is also pausing any M&A activity and freezing pay and recruitment in order to limit cash outflows and reduce costs.

"We are convinced that we are well-positioned to survive the economic challenges of the Coronavirus," stated AdEPT chairman Ian Fishwick.

"This crisis has revealed the critical nature of communications, technology and the reliance on high performance and reliable networks. In the near term (post Covid-19) we hope to show that our IT and unified communications managed services are critical to the survival of any organisation and need to be up-to-date and performant.

"We doubt that the world of work will return completely to 'as it was before', indeed we anticipate a 'new normal' where remote working is more prevalent - increasing the dependence on effective, unified communication, highly resilient networks and cloud technology…we expect to be well placed to address the changed demands that arise."