Company Interview / Atturra turbocharging growth with AI

Stephen Kowal, CEO of Atturra (ASX: ATA), shares his views on the company's recent financial results and future predictions. With revenue of $243.4 million for the financial year, up by 36% from the previous year, Stephen provides a decent forecast of $292 million and an adjusted profitability of over $30 million for the next financial year. Despite a 9% decrease in profit, Stephen maintains this is due to significant acquisitions last year and an underlying growth of 21% in EBITDA is expected.

Stephen shares Atturra's (ASX: ATA) specialism in digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI), managed services, and industry focus in sectors such as natural resources, government, education, utilities, and finance. Most notably, there's an emphasis on the use of AI, with Atturra actively helping clients enhance their environments through data utilisation.

Atturra (ASX: ATA) is also involved in strategic partnerships, which includes working with Nucs, Nvidia, and HPE to maximise efficiency in data processing and analysis. Stephen points out that speed is essential in this environment, and they're setting new benchmarks for processing speeds. The achievement holds great significance for Atturra (ASX: ATA) as it further enhances their ability to provide faster and effective solutions, optimising client interactions. Stephen maintains that the demand for such digital transformation tools is high and foresees sustained growth in future.

Full unedited transcript below:

0:11

All right, let's come back now and catch up with further news on the earnings front. Enterprise advisory, consulting and IT services firm Azura reporting a revenue of 243.4 million for the financial year, up 36% from the previous year. Profits at 9.7 million. That's down 9%, forecasting revenue more than 292 million and adjusted earnings in more than 30 million in the next financial year. Let's get some further detail. Chief executive Steven Karl joining us now Steven, welcome to us biz. Thanks for joining us. Just thank you very much. Before we get into the results, tell us a little more on those unfamiliar with your firm what you actually do.

0:52

Yeah. So a tour is like an end to end IT service provider. Um, so we specialize in, you know, digital transformation, AI providing managed services. And we focus on, you know, selected industry segments, things like natural resources, government, education, utilities and finance. So it's really about helping clients transform their environment, but then provide the ongoing support and management post that. Well, you've just dropped that key thematic a I how are you actually playing that. What's your what's your model in terms of leveraging that if you like. Yeah. So so look obviously AI's been quite hyped the last few years really off the back of the generative AI. Um, we've been involved in AI uh, for some time. Um, so more around helping clients, you know, go through their data and, and use kind of outcomes that specifically help their environment. Um, we also last week, for example, there was a press release put out by a company called Nucs, where our teams

1:52

that help them, together with Nvidia and HPE, accelerate their ability to do processing and investigation by ten fold against the previous record benchmarks. You actually can you expand a little more on that, on that partnership with, uh, with Newark? So, as you say, looking to accelerate that, the AI workloads, if you like. Um, you're actually what, providing that that infrastructure and supporting.

2:18

Yeah. That's right. So we've we've taken the new NIO solution, uh, work together with, with HP and Nvidia and worked out a way to do it at greater speed. And speed is important in that environment. So, you know, if you're going through investigations or, you know, analyzing mass volumes of data, then the time you do that in is really, really important. So yeah, our engineers, together with their engineers, really kind of set a new benchmark for the speed. We can do that now. Why that's important. We can then take that managed solution that managed new IC solution to our client base and to new clients, uh, to analyze and process data, you know, significantly quicker than historically.

2:57

How's your pipeline looking in terms of some of those partnerships and contracts?

3:02

Yeah. Pretty good. Um obviously that was just released last week. Um, but no, look, at there's this massive demand out there, but massive demand actually across the board. More from a digital transformation perspective. So it's not really just about the AI. This is one tool in the toolkit. It's more about how do I modernize my environment. How do I move friction out of the client engagement, and how do I simplify my processes and and get costs out? So, you know, I think almost every company now is a is a technology company. They're all focused on how do I deploy that and how to do it effectively. And our tour is really unique in the market because in addition to having the technical capability, we do have that deep industry focus. Um, and I, you know, around a thousand staff, you know, 950 plus are here in Australia. So we can work directly with the client in the room and solve those problems for them. So, Stephen, two numbers then as I mentioned, their net profit down about 9%. What's what's that

4:02

attributable to.

4:03

Yeah. So look the the decrease in the stat numbers are we did some fairly large acquisitions last year. Um, so there were two components, some amortization component and the acquisition costs when you strip them out. Um, we actually had an underlying growth of about 21% in EBITDA. So, um, we flagged that to the market, uh, throughout the year, uh, knowing we had to do that investment in that M&A. Um, so the underlying businesses all there, that was kind of one offs that drove that. And what's your forecast.

4:35

Yeah. So so forecast. So we're looking at 20% growth uh on the top line junior year. So we're talking about any year about 292 million um for FY 25 and an underlying EBITDA of around 30 million. So we're very consistent on our bottom line performance. And we have a strategy internally of investing any over performance back into the business. We're focused on growth. We've you know, since FY 19, um, you know, we've achieved an average growth of over 30%. And that's really by taking the performance, delivering an underlying result. That's consistent for our investors and taking that over performance and putting into growth initiatives.