The Mitula Group Ltd (ASX: MUA) share price has plummeted 40% this morning after the online advertising aggregator warned its 2017 calendar year operating income (EBITDA) would come in at $12 million to $13 million, which is significantly lower than the previous forecast of between $17 million to $19 million.
The 2017 calendar year revenue forecast has also been revised down to between $34 million to $36 million, compared to prior forecasts of between $38 million to $41 million. The company noted that full year revenue growth is still expected to be 21% to 29% above the prior year.
However, management has some explaining to do after it blamed the big downgrade to EBITDA guidance on a "configuration error that occurred when the outsourced data centre changed bandwidth providers".
The group stated that the error caused "a slowdown in the delivery of pages resulting in Google penalising the Mitula branded vertical search sites". The "human error" resulted in lower-than-expected AdSense and cost per click revenues.
Mitula Group was started in Spain and is headquartered in Madrid, but listed on the ASX on July 1 2015.
