{"id":686844,"date":"2026-05-22T07:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/686844\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T07:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:27:08","slug":"this-asx-ai-stock-is-surging-9-today-after-a-wild-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/686844\/","title":{"rendered":"This ASX AI stock is surging 9% today after a wild month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Appen Ltd\u00a0(ASX: APX<\/a>) shares are back in the green on Friday after the artificial intelligence (AI) data company gave investors a closer look at its turnaround. <\/p>\n

At the time of writing, the Appen share price is up 8.93% to $1.22.<\/p>\n

That move comes after a rough month for shareholders, with the stock down around 25% over the past 4 weeks.<\/p>\n

Despite the recent slide, Appen shares are still up about 50% in 2026. <\/p>\n

So, what did Appen tell the market today?<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

image source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

Why AI demand is driving the update<\/p>\n

At today’s\u00a0Annual General Meeting (AGM)<\/a>, Appen Chief Executive Ryan Kolln focused heavily on the company’s role in the AI market.<\/p>\n

Appen provides data used to build and improve AI models. That includes human-generated data, model evaluation, speech and audio work, computer vision, coding tasks, and reinforcement learning environments. <\/p>\n

The company argues that this work is becoming increasingly valuable as AI models move beyond public data and require more specialised inputs.<\/p>\n

As AI models become more advanced, they need more than internet data. They also need people to review answers, test outputs, label information, check quality, and build datasets in complex areas. <\/p>\n

Appen said it is already winning work in areas such as robotics annotation, coding vulnerability testing, reinforcement learning environments, multilingual audio models, and multimodal evaluation. <\/p>\n

After years of pressure on revenue and margins, the question now is whether Appen can turn that AI demand into steadier growth.<\/p>\n

China growth helps the result<\/p>\n

The\u00a0FY25 result<\/a>\u00a0gave investors a few signs that the business is stabilising. <\/p>\n

Appen reported group revenue of $230.8 million for FY25, up 4.5% on FY24 when excluding the impact of Google. <\/p>\n

Underlying\u00a0EBITDA<\/a>\u00a0before foreign exchange (FX) impacts came in at $12.2 million, up 251% on the prior year.<\/p>\n

Gross margin also improved to 40.3%, helped by a better mix of generative AI projects. <\/p>\n

Appen China was a strong part of the result, with FY25 revenue rising 75% to $102.9 million. Underlying EBITDA before FX lifted to $10.6 million, with the business benefiting from new and expanding LLM-related projects. <\/p>\n

Appen Global was still weaker over the full year, with revenue down 21% to $127.9 million. However, management pointed to a much stronger fourth quarter, helped by generative AI work and cost savings. <\/p>\n

FY26 guidance stays in place<\/p>\n

The other key point from today’s update is that Appen has reaffirmed its FY26 guidance.<\/p>\n

The company continues to expect revenue of $270 million to $300 million. <\/p>\n

It is also targeting an underlying EBITDA margin before FX of around 5% to 10%.<\/p>\n

Management said the business continues to see positive signals from LLM-related growth across Appen Global and Appen China.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Appen is also trying to keep costs under control while putting money behind the areas showing revenue growth.<\/p>\n

Foolish bottom line<\/p>\n

Appen is still a highly\u00a0volatile<\/a>\u00a0stock, but today’s update gives investors a few reasons to stay positive. <\/p>\n

The company is now seeing stronger demand from AI customers, China is growing quickly, and underlying EBITDA has improved.<\/p>\n

The next test is whether Appen can turn the current AI demand into more consistent revenue growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Appen Ltd\u00a0(ASX: APX) shares are back in the green on Friday after the artificial intelligence (AI) data company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-686844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}