The Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) share price has continued its good form of the week so far, and is up another 3.18% today to $13.62 a share at the time of writing. This move comes after the tech company rocketed more than 19% in value yesterday on the back of a business update the company gave to investors.
But these rises pale against the losses investors have suffered on Appen shares in recent months. Since reaching a peak of $43.66 in August last year, Appen has been locked in a nasty share price slide, which saw the company's shares lose more than 65% of their value on today's pricing. As recently as Monday, these losses were as high as 72%.
But investors seemed to have a decisive change of heart yesterday, when the company increased its market capitalisation by a fifth in one trading session. The catalyst for this bold move? The aforementioned business and trading update.
As we covered yesterday, Appen announced a business restructure that will result in the company having four customer-facing business units. These will be global, enterprise, China, and government.
Appen also announced that it would be moving to report in US dollars.
In terms of the trading update, the company announced that it is on track to deliver underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$83-90 million in FY 2021. That's in line with its previous guidance. This would translate into a growth rate of 18-28% from FY 2020.
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Appen shares rise after investor day presentation
So what's changed today? Well, Appen held an investor technology day presentation this morning, the contents of which it has disclosed to the markets.
There wasn't a lot of new information that built on what Appen discussed yesterday. However, the company did discuss its restructuring plans (or 'evolution') as well as how it's positioning its business models for future growth. Appen also laid out its plans for new products, which include Appen Intelligence, Appen In-Platform Audit and Appen Mobile.
Investors have clearly liked what they have seen, given the Appen share price reaction today. Appen is now up more than 25% since the lows it was hitting just last Friday.
Investors will no doubt be hoping that it's only up from here, and this marks Appen's return to its glory days. We will have to wait and see if that proves the case, but the performance over the past 2 days is a good start to that end. At the current share price, Appen has a market capitalisation of $1.69 billion.
