No harm in trimming and you probably did so at a good...

No harm in trimming and you probably did so at a good point.

There is an argument here that they are more a tech company now than they were 3 years ago. They have shifted from negotiating large individual contracts directly with large institutions (definitely not tech) to a platform business (Leapforce) which is almost tech. The platform allows users (institutions both big and small now) to utilise Appen's contractors directly without having the Appen team negotiate contracts. The large contract negotiation side of things still exists but the platform style of the business gives them a lot more scale and diversifies their revenue base.
I think if we see a downturn in NASDAQ revenues, this will be the first one to get hammered. Not pure tech but more like tech services in my eyes - we will be able to draw similarities to mining services and the mining cycle.

On another note, I've seen (great) private tech businesses cop it and not get sufficient funding because they aren't creating "recurring revenue" in the traditional SAAS sense but instead were contracting every year. The reality is that their (and APX) revenues exists and won't disappear tomorrow, in fact quite the opposite. You don't need contracted revs to be successful.

The AI trend isn't going anywhere and the reality is that you need to train systems which is done through large datasets and crowds training machines, its ugly but not changing in the near future. Multiple studies by both GOOG & MSFT showing that you need a 10x increase in the quantity of relevant data used for training to double the quality of the AI. Guess who sits in prime position?

FWIW, I too am very sceptical of their acq, I think they overpaid and it was highly EPS dilutive. Nonetheless, the core business is continues to excel and the investment thematic in my view hasn't changed. F8 is too much of a blackbox and we are a while away from understanding whether it is a good or bad acq.