The Catapult Group International (ASX: CAT) share price jumped 1.9% to $6.50 a piece at the time of writing on Thursday morning. The tech stock has shed 10.2% over the past month after it went into a trading halt ahead of a major acquisition and capital raising.
Over the past 6 months the shares have climbed an impressive 58.4% and over the past year have rocketed 142.9%.
And now many investors and analysts are asking: Is this tech stock going to be the next big unicorn?
What's driven the tech stock's shares this year?
Catapult is a global sports data and analytics company. It provides real-time data to optimize athletes' performance via wearable performance trackers and video analytics to professional teams. It already works with more than 4,600 teams across 40 sports in over 100 countries.
The tech company experienced a robust 19% revenue uplift in the FY25 year. This was propelled by an 18% increase in its Annualised Contract Value (ACV).
The business has been actively expanding its position in the market with acquisitions of companies such as Perch (Catalyft Labs, Inc) midway through the calendar year. Last month, when it went into its trading halt, the company announced a binding agreement to acquire German football intelligence platform IMPECT GmbH for around $139 million.
Aside from continual growth and acquisition, the company is also focused on customer retention. In its FY25 results, the business revealed customer retention was 96%. Catapult also continues to add new clients across soccer, baseball, and basketball. Its customer lifetime duration has also increased 11% year-on-year to 7.8 years.
Catapult's "Rule of 40" SaaS score also increased to 31%, a tenfold increase from just two years ago. Management said it's a clear signal that the business is growing in strength and operation efficiency. It is also effectively capturing the outsized opportunity in global professional sport.
What could make it the next big unicorn?
While Catapult's business growth is clearly on the right track for success, there are a few other reasons why the tech stock looks to be well positioned to be the next Australian unicorn.
Saas, or software as a service, is gaining traction thanks to its ability to streamline development and features. Catapult has been shifting from hardware sales to recurring software subscriptions for some time and this makes for a higher, and more stable, margin.
The company has been benefitting from improving profitability and with data analytics and sports tech heating up, the potential for more acquisitions (or even for the business to be seen as an acquisition target) is rising too.
Speaking of sports tech and analytics, the global market size is calculated at US$5.47 billion for 2025. It's predicted to increase from US$6.60 billion in 2026 to approximately US$29.75 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 20.63% from 2025 to 2034.
Catapult is well positioned to take a slice of that market.
What do analysts think of Catapult shares?
This morning, Analysts at Bell Potter have said now could be the time to buy Catapult shares.
The broker revealed it has upgraded the sports technology company's shares to a buy rating. It also has a $7.50 price target on the shares and cites improved business valuation.
At the time of writing this represents a potential 15.4% upside for investors over the next 12 months.
