Nuix boss Jonathan Rubinsztein has defended his purchase of...

Nuix boss Jonathan Rubinsztein has defended his purchase of shares amid a possible takeover discussion, saying he has “nothing to hide” as the investigation software company narrowed losses for the year and reported a sharp uptick in underlying earnings.Nuix, which sells investigative software for large enterprises, reduced its losses to $5.6 million for 2022, down from $22.8 million a year earlier. Underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation came in at $46.4 million, up 59 per cent on the previous period.“Our legal costs are lowering and we’ve been signing up more pharmaceutical and legal customers,” Mr Rubinsztein said.“We’ve also just launched our new platform, from which revenue is likely to flow through to the bottom line within the next six to eight months.Nuix shares fell 12 per cent in early trade to $1.40.Nuix burned through $17 million in cash over the past year, but Mr Rubinsztein said most of that was through one-off legal costs and two acquisitions – natural language processing company Topos Labs and long-term Canadian technology partner Rampiva.“We’re very comfortable with the cash position, and the current cash burn is not from operations, it’s from legal costs and acquisitions,” he said. Nuix has about $29 million in the bank, and Mr Rubinsztein said Nuix had no plans to go to market and raise further cash.Nuix has been plagued by several ongoing legal battles, including an ASIC investigation into the company’s reporting following its 2020 IPO and another investigation into the purchase of shares by Mr Rubinsztein.“I have nothing to hide,” Mr Rubinsztein said of the investigations. “We are working with ASIC to close it out quickly.”Nuix has also been dealing with a five-year court battle against former chief executive Eddie Sheehy, whose appeal will be heard next week.Earlier this year, the court dismissed Mr Sheehy’s claim that he was entitled to a stock split that would have allowed him to cash out during the company’s billion-dollar IPO.“Hopefully that [appeal] will be dealt with very quickly,” Mr Rubinsztein said.The tech stock reported a 19.8 per cent rise in statutory revenue to $182.5 million over the past year. Most of the new revenue was added during the month of June and the company benefiting from a currency tailwind.Despite the jump in new customer sign-ups, multi-year deals fell from 40 per cent to 30 per cent for the financial year.Contract values are a key metric for Nuix, which sells technology that analyses large swaths of unstructured data and is embedded within large companies such as banks, auditing firms and investigations units within the FBI and UK intelligence.This metric rose 14.5 per cent to $185.5 million for the year, with the company pointing to growth in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.Customer churn slipped from 5.4 per cent to 5.3 per cent for the year, though Mr Rubinsztein said increased upselling contributed to the boost in underlying earnings.Excluding the legal bills, Nuix booked underlying cash flow of $9.1 million for the year.