Kain,MSFT Relationship: LVT hired a couple of quite senior US...

Kain,

MSFT Relationship: LVT hired a couple of quite senior US management from MSFT in 2017. They were not announced but we heard about this in 2018 and confirmed with a brief call. I dont have my notes here because I am at home. I vaguely recall that one was something like Head of US for the industrial services partner channel, person responsible for client relationships and sales to the entire service company sector in the US (construction real estate etc etc . ) I may have the precise details wrong BUT I do recall the conclusions we drew: (1) There is no way in hell that you would hire these people without getting permission from MSFT first. You dont steal key personnel from MSFT and expect to have a relationship with MSFT going forward. So MSFT must have (a) Liked what LVT were doing and (b) agreed to a deep relationship (2) The guys they hired would have really done their due diligence on LVT and the products before giving up a very well paid job at MSFT (which usually includes great stock options).

Victory Tech : In our humble opinion, this news snippet was completely irrelevant . The cynical part of me thinks that someone from their IR consultant must have thought the news flow on the ASX was a bit quiet and they needed an announcement. We think the marine corp is a client of LVT and was already a client at the time of the announcement, Victory Tech was possibly or even likely the reseller. They have over 100 transacting resellers. Victory is just another small family owned MSFT reseller. There are hundreds, even thousands of them in the US. Actually, as complete speculation and guesswork, it might not be IR, it might just be LVT giving their reseller a pat on the back and free publicity after a decent sized sale. LVT cannot and should not be announcing every reseller they sign up (unless it is one of the really large famous ones, who usually ask for an NDA anyway) but sometimes, as a public company, you can earn some goodwill with a reseller by publishing an announcement, Do you ever stay on in the movie theater after the movie is finished and watch page after page of credits for all the hundreds of people who worked on the film? This announcement was like one of those. The second gaffer and the set carpenter did a really good job and we want to thank them for working on the movie......but really who gives a sheet?

N3 was a seriously important announcement. The line in the presentation last year which gave away that Deloittes is a reseller was a serious nugget of information. The announcement of the deal with Testfire was an important indicator of their strategy and ability to bolt on products.

But even with Testfire, it was typical silicon valley hyperbole to describe Testfire as "an important AI company" in the announcement. . Testfire is a small start up funded by a combination of venture capital and state funding which happens to have designed a really cool product. They probably did not have the resources or marketing know how to bring it to market in scale. They probably wept with joy when LVT agreed to incorporate Hendrix in their product suite. LVT's core position in providing the enterprise portal puts them in a very nice spot to keep their eye out for bolt on products, and puts them in a good negotiating position to offer to distribute the bolt on product. Dont get me wrong, I think Hendrix fits in beautifully with LVT's "Intelligent workplace" strategy .....but "important AI company"? Neh....but they want to give their new partner a nice pat on the back.