When to Catch a Falling Knife, page-18

I've always liked IR. I've watched them for years (since 2009) but never bought. My bad.

They are a great company, for all the reasons you mention. Recently I see that they are advertising for senior developer roles - as part of a new push to go to "the AWS cloud". My (recent) hesitation to buy at these levels is because I feel (maybe mistakenly) that their market penetration has matured and that there are fewer opportunities to grow the business. I hope they're not just predicating future growth on a push to the cloud. Not least of my concerns would be that this undertaking would take considerable time and effort and maybe increase recurring revenue, but have little effect on headline revenue growth. I may be wrong and I'm willing to stand corrected, but I want to see new (under penetrated) markets to go after. How are they going to grow headline revenue? I think they have really benefited from a rising tide for many years, but that is lever not in the control of management. Sure they've got a great product suite, but some other zeitgeist has promulgated the requirement for their services. If they've already conquered 70~80% of the top 10 companies, what is their vision to address the rest of the TAM in the same space and what NEW markets can they go after? Perhaps new regional markets? How will they drive new business? What are the caveats on this vision? I guess a subscription based approach would enable new business models, but with a considerable development effort, that would be some time away yet (IMO).

I'm going to wait and see (with interest).

Cheers