Image source: Luxoft.

Luxoft Holding (LXFT) announced fiscal first-quarter earnings Thursday after the market close. In contrast to last quarter's modest post-earnings pop, shares of the software-development company are down around 3.4% Friday as of this writing. Let's dig a little deeper to see how Luxoft kicked off its new fiscal year.

Luxoft Holding results: The raw numbers

 

Fiscal Q1 2016 Actuals*

Fiscal Q1 2015 Actuals

Growth (YOY)

GAAP revenue

$178.0 million

$148.1 million

20.3%

GAAP net income

$14.1 million

$14.6 million

(3.4%)

GAAP earnings per diluted share

$0.42

$0.43

(2.3%)

*For the quarter ended June 30, 2016. Data source: Luxoft Holding.

What happened with Luxoft Holding this quarter?

  • On a constant-currency basis, GAAP revenue would have climbed 21.5% year over year.
  • Adjusted (non-GAAP) net income grew 1.9% year over year, to $21.0 million, and rose $0.01 per share, to $0.62.
  • Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBTIDA) grew 8.8% year over year, to $29.6 million, good for adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.6%.
  • Luxoft doesn't provide quarterly financial guidance. But for perspective -- and though we don't pay close attention to Wall Street's short-term demands -- analysts, on average, were looking for slightly higher adjusted earnings of $0.63 per share.
  • Revenue growth by core vertical included:
    • 18.2% growth in financial services, to $122.4 million (32.8% excluding Luxoft's top-two accounts)
    • 74% growth in automotive and transport, to $25.5 million (183% excluding its top account)
    • 15.8% growth in telecom, to $9.9 million
    • a 14.9% decline in technology vertical revenue, to $9.1 million
    • 10.7% growth in travel and aviation, to $7.7 million
    • a 3.2% decline in energy, to just over $3 million
    • an 8% decline in all other verticals, to $424,000
  • Revenue by geography included:
    • 15.5% growth in the U.K., to $61.1 million
    • 1% growth in the U.S., to $47.1 million
    • 46.9% growth in Germany, to $26.3 million
    • 152.6% growth in Switzerland, to just over $10 million
    • 34% growth in Singapore, to $3.1 million
    • 68.3% growth from other European countries, to $17.3 million
  • Concentration from Luxoft's top client decreased 6.3% year over year, and top-three client concentration fell 2.8%.
  • Productivity per engineer at the end of the quarter stood at $75,498, up from $76,400 last quarter.
  • Ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of $131.8 million, up from $108.5 million last quarter.
  • Generated cash flow from operations of $32.7 million, or 18.3% of revenue, and up 45.5% year over year.

What management had to say

CEO Dmitry Loschinin stated:

This has been a good start to the new financial year for us. We opened it by posting strong growth for the first quarter. For the remainder of the year, we look forward to executing the initiatives we embarked on during the first five months. We expect that this year will be transformational for Luxoft, when we expand into new verticals and geographies and solidify our existing core verticals and global sales efforts. We believe that the short-term uncertainty driven by Brexit will spur us to make changes that will increase the resilience of our business and help us capitalize on numerous opportunities resulting from the migration of enterprise operations globally and massive regulatory changes around the world.

Looking forward

Luxoft isn't in the habit of offering specific quarterly financial guidance. But given its in-line performance this quarter, management was comfortable enough to reiterate its previous guidance for the full fiscal year ended March 31, 2017.

As a reminder, that guidance calls for full-year revenue increase of at least 20% year over year, to $781 million, with adjusted EBITDA margin of 17% to 19%, GAAP earnings of at least $2.10 per share, and adjusted earnings of at least $2.85 per share. By comparison, analysts' consensus estimates had predicted full fiscal-year revenue of $789.6 million, and adjusted earnings of $3.00 per share.

All things considered, this performance was impressive considering the macroeconomic uncertainty Luxoft is facing in its key core markets right now. And Luxoft achieved its revenue growth despite a notable slowdown across its top-three clients. So while Luxoft's top- and bottom-line results weren't exactly awe-inspiring relative to expectations, I think this looks like a solid starting point to its new fiscal year.