Third Quarter Trading Update

Avast PLC

THIRD QUARTER TRADING UPDATE

18 October 2018

Avast plc, together with its subsidiaries ('Avast' or 'the Group'), a leading global cybersecurity provider, issues the following scheduled trading update for the third quarter of its current financial year, comprising the period from 1 July 2018 to 30 September 2018.

Financial Summary

For the third quarter, Adjusted Revenue rose by 8.6% excluding FX and Discontinued Business, and 10.0% in actual rates, to $206.3m, continuing the growth trend seen in the first half. For the year to date, Adjusted Revenue rose by 8.5% excluding FX and Discontinued Business, and 9.8% in actual rates, to $600.6m.

Adjusted Billings in the third quarter, and consequently for the year to date, delivered a growth trend similar to the first half. 

For the third quarter, Adjusted EBITDA increased 5.5% to $113.5m. For the year to date, Adjusted EBITDA increased 8.8% to $335.6m, resulting in Adjusted EBITDA margin year to date of 54.7%.

At 30 September 2018, net debt / LTM ("last twelve months") Adjusted EBITDA was 2.8x and net debt / Adjusted Cash EBITDA was at 2.6x, in line with our expectations.

Vince Steckler, Chief Executive of Avast, commented:

"I'm pleased to report that Avast has delivered good growth in the third quarter, consistent with our expectations at the time of the Half Year Results in August. We've also been successful in maintaining our market-leading levels of profitability, on account of the Group's significant scale and operating leverage.

"The Group's cost-effective user acquisition model and large, global user base of more than 435m users remain key competitive strengths for the business. We continue to execute our strategy with confidence, and our expectations for the full year remain unchanged."

Outlook

We remain confident of delivering a full year performance in line with expectations.  We reiterate full year guidance for high single digit Adjusted Revenue growth excluding FX and Discontinued Business. We also reaffirm the upgrade provided at half year to Adjusted EBITDA margin percentage, which due to operational improvements we expect to be flat to slightly increasing year-on-year inclusive of annualised PLC costs of $7m.

The Group expects to issue its full year results for the twelve months to 31 December 2018 on Wednesday 13 March 2019.

ENQUIRIES

Investors and analysts:

Peter Russell, Director of IR

IR@avast.com

Media:

Stephanie Kane, VP PR and Corporate Communications

mediarelations@avast.com

Jos Simson / Lulu Bridges

Tavistock

Tel: 020 7920 3150

Footnotes

¹ Growth rate excluding currency impact calculated by restating Q3 2018 actual to Q3 2017 FX rates, and 9M 2018 actual to 9M 2017 FX rates. Deferred revenue is translated to USD at date of invoice and is therefore excluded when calculating the impact of FX on revenue

² As the company is exiting its toolbar-related search distribution business, which had previously been an important contributor to AVG's revenues (referred to above, with the Group's browser clean-up business, as "Discontinued Business"), the growth figures exclude Discontinued Business, which the Group expects to be negligible by the end of 2019

³ Growth figures exclude the impact of the Piriform acquisition made on 1 July 2017,  through the inclusion of Piriform pre-acquisition results

Notes to Editors

Avast plc is the leading global cybersecurity provider to the consumer market with more than 435 million users worldwide.

Founded in 1988, Avast offers a range of products that protect users' security, privacy and improve device performance preventing approximately two billion attacks per month. Avast's customer base serves both the consumer and SME market via its five key business units: Avast consumer, Avast mobile, Avast business and Avast platform.

Avast is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, and has grown to over 1,700 employees worldwide. Its top five markets are the USA and Canada, Brazil, France, Russia and Germany.

Avast listed on the London Stock Exchange in May 2018 (Ticker: AVST), and joined the FTSE 250 in September 2018.