It's been a rough year for many shares on the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) in 2022 so far. The ASX 200 remains down around 3% so far this year, which tells us that many shares have failed to break over the year to date. One of the ASX 200's more disappointing performers has been the Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) share price.
At the time of writing tody. Appen is down by 1.13% at $6.99 a share. That puts it at a dismal loss of 37.6% in 2022 alone. Over the past 12 months, Appen shares are now down by a sobering 61.8%.
Yes despite these clouds of gloom over the Appen share price, there has also been a more recent silver lining for the annotated dataset company. It was exactly a month ago today that Appen found a new 52-week low of $6.08 a share. Since then, the company has gone on to add almost 14% to its share price.
So could this mean Appen shares are on the comeback trail? After all, Appen used to be known as one of the WAAAX market darling growth shares.
Is the Appen share price a buy today?
Well, one investing expert certainly thinks so. That would be Ben Clark, portfolio manager at TMS Capital.
Interviewed by Livewire, Mr Clark named Appen as one of seven ASX shares "for when the market comes roaring back". Although Clark acknowledged that Appen's most recent results were disappointing, he is still bullish on the company's long-term prospects. Here's some of what he had to say on Appen:
They're so far above every analyst's expectation of where they'll be in five years. I would also say there was a reaction like, 'Oh they're going to take weaker margins to try and grow the revenue line harder on the core'. The CEO was actually adamant that wasn't going to happen. So, there's sort of a bit of confusion there.
We're sticking with it. It's a business that we skim some time ago, a few years ago, and that we've added to in more recent years, it's a fairly small holding, but I still think that there's a good business there.
So a comeback trail might be what is in store for Appen going forward, if Mr Clark is to be believed. No doubt Appen's recently-suffering shareholders would hope so. But we shall have to wait and see, as always.
At the current Appen share price, this ASX 200 tech share has a market capitalisation of $872.3 million, with a dividend yield of 1.44%
