Ann: 1st Half FY19 Results Announcement, page-87

Fair point cyw. I acknowledge these are experienced entrepreneurs who have run a tech business before and almost surely had to control costs before. So on reflection I suspect it likely that they had an executable plan. In order to take 15% of the overall cost out without damaging R&D and growth then this would mean taking 20% of costs out of certain areas. They hired 60+ contractors in under 6 months, Tech sales work like any other business, 80% of the sales will be generated by 20% of the people. I would applaud if they harvested the bottom 20% under-performers.

However:-
(1) Even with a great plan, its very hard to do that in just one quarter.
(2) My base case works even if they only do half that. Cash burn will still have inflected and be improving quarter after successive quarter
(3) Since the announcement , they hired David Vander. A former head of global services from MSFT is a high end hire. I have no doubt that the business he generates will pay for itself but in the short term it will add to the expense side. That said, I am reassured to see someone like that take a senior management role at LVT. He will have done his homework and made some calls to C level execs at LVT customers.

Bottom line, my base case is what it is. If they beat the base case, we can all raise our targets accordingly.

This stock is very binary over the next 6-9 months. If cash burn has truly inflected and they are capable of reaching $50 m ARR in next 9 months and $100 m by 2021, then this stock will be a lot higher.