What happened
Shares of Luxoft Holding Inc. (LXFT) were down 21.3% as of 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday after the software development company announced strong quarterly results, but followed with light guidance.
On the former, for Luxoft's fiscal fourth-quarter ended March 31, 2018, revenue climbed 14.1% year over year to $232.9 million. That translated to adjusted (non-GAAP) net income of $20.5 million, or $0.59 per diluted share, down from $21.5 million, or $0.63 per share in the same year-ago period. By comparison, consensus estimates called for the same earnings on slightly lower revenue of $228.8 million.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Luxoft CEO Dmitry Loschinin noted the results were mostly in line with expectations, marking "the end to a year of progress but also continued challenges."
"Despite the impact of certain troubled accounts, we continued to execute our strategic mandate of revenue diversification through increased penetration of attractive markets like Automotive and Digital Enterprise, while also identifying incremental value-driven opportunities," Loschinin said.
To be sure, revenue excluding Luxoft's top two accounts grew 20.3% year over year. Within that, revenue from the automotive and financial services markets soared 37.4% and 57.9%, respectively.
Now what
For the current first quarter of fiscal 2019, however, Luxoft sees revenue arriving in the range of $210 million to $215 million -- up from $209.2 million in the same year-ago period, but significantly below the $238.5 million most investors were expecting.
"Based on project timing, seasonality, ramp down of the large Financial Services account and planned expenses related to SG&A optimization, we expect this to be our slowest quarter and for growth to accelerate as we move through fiscal 2019," Loschinin said.
This was a solid end to Luxoft's fiscal year, and its longer-term growth story appears to remain intact. But given its soft outlook to start fiscal year 2019, it's no surprise to see Luxoft stock pulling back in response.
