Why the Ava Risk Group (ASX:AVA) share price has rocketed 41% so far this week

Ava Risk Group Ltd (ASX: AVA) announced on Monday a record breaking first quarter of FY21. The news has sent the Ava Risk Group share price up by 40.91% so far this week. Let’s take a closer look at what the company reported.

What’s moving the Ava share price?

Investors have been driving up the Ava Risk Group share price this week after the company reported a massive 73% surge in revenue compared to this time last year.

In a statement issued by the company on Monday this week, Ava CEO, Rob Broomfield, said: 

Our strong Q1 FY2021 results have demonstrated that our streamlined and highly scalable cost structure, along with our diverse customer base and revenue streams, are able to show continued growth even in times as disruptive as the current COVID-19 period.

High level results 

It’s important to note that these results are currently ‘unaudited’, however some highlights from the reporting included:

• Sales revenue increased by 73%, compared to the same period last year, to $17 million.
• Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) improved by 522% compared to the same period last year and is sitting at $7.7 million.
• Cash as at the end of Q1 2020 increased by 50% from the previous quarter, with balances sitting at $11.6 million.

Both the company’s services and technology divisions contributed to these results.

Services division

Ava’s services division recorded revenue of $8.1 million and EBITDA of $1.6 million.

The company noted that the revenue had begun to normalise due to reduced restriction on air travel leading out of COVID-19. However, it also reported that this didn’t overshadow the strong underlying revenue trend in general. Essentially, the company is saying that a global recovery is certainly helping but it shouldn’t detract from Ava’s overall success as a business.

Further news in the services division saw the announcement of a new general manager for Asia, who will be based in Singapore. The company also hinted that further key appointments could be expected to be announced in Q2 FY2021. On the topic of key roles, Ava also stated that its management incentive scheme, which was due to expire in February 2021, had now been extended to the end of FY2021.

Technology division

The technology division recorded revenue of $8.9 million and EBITDA of $6.1 million.

Ava reported that the technology division had continued to operate amidst the coronavirus crisis. Although general restrictions were in place, the tech division was able to continue delivering services to both current and new customers, including some deliveries for major defence programs. 

One major project highlighted in this latest report was the large-scale data network protection program for the Indian Ministry of Defence. This alone resulted in a contribution of $3.6 million in revenue for the quarter.

Some other highlights from the technology division included:

• Strong commercial interest in a new conveyor health monitoring solution called ‘Aura IQ’.
• Increasing activity with the assurance sensing solutions. This relates to terrestrial and sub-sea power cables and roads infrastructure.
• First shipment of Ava’s latest FOSS (free and open-source software) platform with machine learning software.

The FOSS platform is the completion of the first step in Ava’s ‘roadmap of innovative solutions’ with the goal being to move to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue mode. 

About Ava Risk Group

Ava Risk Group is a leading provider of risk management services and technologies. It services clients in the commercial, industrial, military and government sectors.

This company delivers solutions that are high tech and complex. It helps clients tackle risk management threats to perimeters, pipelines and data networks. Using bio metrics, card access control and locking, as well as secure international logistics, storage of high value assets and risk consultancy services, Ava delivers a diverse range of solutions. 

The Ava share price has increased 287.5% in year-to-date trading and has soared more than 416% since this time last year.