Financial Results • By Esther Bond On

SDL Expects 2019 Revenues of Roughly USD 488m

2019 full-year earnings season has begun for the world’s largest language service providers (LSPs). First off the mark is UK-listed LSP SDL, which provided the markets with a trading update on January 21, 2020.

While not giving out a specific number, SDL said it “expects 2019 revenue and adjusted operating profit to be significantly ahead of 2018 and in line with market expectations” and stated 2019 full year results would be released on March 25, 2020.

So what are market expectations? Analysts from brokerage firms Numis, N+1 Singer, and Panmure Gordon estimate SDL’s full-year 2019 revenues to be between GBP 368–377m (USD 480–492m) in research reports published in H2 2019. Meanwhile, aggregate consensus data published by the Financial Times peg full-year revenues at GBP 373.6m (USD 487.6m). In terms of the bottom line, analysts expect SDL’s adjusted operating profit to come in at GBP 34–36m (USD 44–47m) for the year.

By this measure, SDL would post revenue growth of around 14–16% on the back of the July 2018 acquisition of Donnelley Language Solutions (DLS) and an increase in adjusted operating profit of roughly 20–27%.

In the release, SDL singled out a number of factors as key contributors including the launch of SDL Language Cloud, progress in its neural machine translation (NMT) product offering, and strong performance across a number of verticals such as high tech, financial services and life sciences. Business automation and the DLS acquisition also produced operational benefits, the release said.

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Over the course of 2019, SDL saw a share price gain (SlatorPro) of nearly 20%, comfortably beating its 2018 performance. The company’s current market capitalization stands at around USD 738m.

Slator will provide follow-up coverage of SDL’s full-year results when they are released in March 2020. SDL’s reporting currency is GBP and any forex conversions into USD used above are as of January 21, 2020.