Why it won’t be Deliveroo that casts a shadow on Darktrace

You’d have thought a company would need to be brave or foolish to follow in Deliveroo’s smoky wake on to the London market. 

In the event, cyber security company Darktrace appears to be neither. Perhaps because this looks quite a different type of tech offering.

For a start, it has some proper technology behind it. Such is the enthusiasm for showing the UK can attract digital fare that there has been a tendency to pump everything with a website like it’s the next great tech play. 

But Darktrace boasts that it uses machine learning and artificial intelligence in cyber security software. Traditional cyber defence involves building walls against potential attacks, which then must be adapted and replicated as threats evolve and change. Darktrace, founded in Cambridge in 2013, instead deploys its software to understand what a business’s “normal” state is; it says it can then use that to identify and prevent attacks quickly.

In other areas, too, Darktrace should be able to shrug off comparisons. One of the less-discussed concerns around Deliveroo, whose shares fell again Monday to trade about 35 per cent below the offer price, was whether the app with bicycles model really translated into a viable, scalable business beyond its home market. 

Darktrace, in contrast, had more than 4,600 customers in more than 100 countries at the end of last year, up from about 1,600 in 2018. Its software is quick to deploy, meaning it can sell by installing its system and letting it show its worth in a two or three week trial. Subscription contracts mean predictable, recurring revenue.

The cyber company also isn’t as obviously riding high on the back of lockdowns. True, travel restrictions meant lower marketing spending. Normal sales activity would have largely wiped out the adjusted ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) profit of $9m for the year to June 2020. (But still, something resembling a profit! In tech!). 

Sales constraints after a pandemic-related hiring freeze will help keep all-important revenue growth to 36-38 per cent this financial year, compared with 45 per cent in 2020, a slowing growth profile that might concern some tech aficionados.

Still, accelerated digital adoption and more remote working should be a boon for cyber companies longer term. And while Darktrace doesn’t have the top-line growth of some US software as a service or cyber peers, like Snowflake or Zscaler, nor is it seeking the same valuation. A mooted $5bn price tag is a sharp step up from its last private valuation of $1.65bn. But it doesn’t look out of line with where some sector companies are trading, according to Public Comps.

Governance is a more complex issue. Darktrace’s five founders, who remain on the management team, aren’t worked up enough about control to demand special treatment. Unlike Deliveroo, there will be no dual-class share structures. 

Its problems are legal rather than structural. Mike Lynch, the former Autonomy boss, was an early investor in Darktrace through his company Invoke Capital. He’s fighting extradition to the US on fraud charges, which he denies, related to the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. His former chief finance officer Sushovan Hussain, also an Darktrace investor, was convicted on similar charges in 2018.

It’s hardly an ideal backdrop to a market debut. And the risk factors in the prospectus make for ugly reading: Darktrace was subpoenaed by the US Justice Department in 2018 and warns it could face potential liability under possible money laundering charges (though it considers successful prosecution a “low risk”)

Lynch left the board of Darktrace in 2018, sufficiently long ago to alleviate concerns about any day to day influence.

But the listing documents suggest a rather tortured attempt to put distance between two things that have been quite closely intertwined. Several Darktrace executives, including its chief executive, were previously employed by Invoke and Autonomy. Lynch was on Darktrace’s advisory council until March 2021, when he moved to a newly-created science & technology council. Invoke has historically provided services to Darktrace, including until recently two employees in its finance operations in Cambridge.

The question is whether potential investors can get comfortable with the reputational headaches — and to focus more on Lynch’s ability to spot homegrown tech potential and less on his continuing legal battles. If they can, Darktrace looks like the kind of tech listing the London market has actually been hoping for.

helen.thomas@ft.com
@helentbiz