@Padova. Of course, there are other perspectives to the one articulated by
@techfacts too. BUD is an IOT data company seeking to establish a presence in the still nascent and evolving but rapidly growing space that this represents. They have evolved over the last couple of years from being a Cloud Platform provider (perhaps a bit generic and undifferentiated except on tech-geek criteria) for IoT players, to now having a couple of better defined 'trojan horses' through which it is seeking to get more data. Before I get to the trojan horses, the pursuit of data has been articulated over time as being a source of revenue, if packaged smartly and with insight, and if it can avoid privacy issue. That is not yet being monetised while privacy (GDPR) issues are being sorted out by the big boys (Google, FB etc).
Back to the trojan horses. With one notable exception, these are designed to be revenue earners in their own right, quite apart from the value (eventually) of any data harvested by them. The first horse was is the smart RV space with Thor (Airstream). This has potential to grow to the other brands under Thor umbrella (eg Jayco) as well as other RV makers. It is BUD's entry into the higher end of the connected vehicle space.
Second horse for Parse (forever free), a mobile back-end that was marketed as a replacement for FB's Parse service. A free service designed to capture mobile app data. Not designed to be a direct revenue generator. Appears to be doing it's job well
Third horse is smart (commercial) buildings within the smart cities vertical. Initially planned to target this via an acquisition (Noveda), but this was aborted and BUD launched the Ohm service. The target being older buildings where retro-fitting a wired solution (dominated by established players) was hard to justify. The mooted ease of installation, and ease of scaling up along with a focus on helping building users as well as building managers visualize the data (fitbit style), were the indicated hot features. Obviously the initial product would evolve over time as the market evolved and as the company understood the market better. There has already been considerable evolution/enhancement...regularly documented by announcements. Separately, the company needed to establish channels and resellers to offer this globally. I believe both management and shareholders severely underestimated the time, cost and effort of doing this. This product clouds everyone's perspective on the company and no small part is due to the massive gap between management guidance and unfolding reality. However, rumours of Ohm's (or Buddy's) demise are much exaggerated. IMO. Twain like. The product is being judged by where it isn't rather than where it is. Maybe fair. Maybe not.
The planned (subject to conditions precedent) acquisition of LiFX is, in my book, more a fourth horse, rather than an enhancement to the third. While it clearly presents opportunities to sweeten Ohms commercial building value proposition (in terms of control of lighting and potentially control of HVAC etc, as well as bundling energy saving lighting options), it also opens the front into the residential building/small office space, again within the smart cities vertical. Obviosuly not with the Ohm brand, but with a residential/soho adapted version of it. Maybe even working with utility companies. Wide open area to speculate on what this acquisition represents other than just "buying a smart LED revenue stream".
SP tells a sorry tale of expectations not being met and of guidance not being believed. No point arguing that point as it seems clear that this is what the market is saying. However, IMO, this does not mean that the company is doomed. It just means that its ambitious journey has a credibility hurdle to also climb with respect to investors. A task made a bit more challenging by the lack of consistency in what is being reported to shareholders, and by lack of transparency in what is being reported. That said, sans LiFX, I estimate the underlying operational revenue for BUD is a shade under $1m per quarter...comprised of about $550k for Ohm and about $400k for Thor. The Thor component is essentially a fixed retainer for app development and support. There is additional, per-RV subscription fees that will now start to be generated - but we have no metrics to help us estimate this. The Ohm revenue needs to grow by at least 50% QonQ to help the company come close to cash-flow break even (sans LiFX) by end of CY19. This may need a so called 'whale' customer to be signed on soon to be reachable. Apart from that, the company recently flagged a 10% QonQ cost cutting drive to help meet the cash-flow break-even goal.
Are they trying to do too much too soon, or are they continuing in the spirit of frontier busting land grabs (subject to funding). Not a straightforward investment by any stretch, and, IMO the complexity of this not being given due justice by the blind fanatics or the angry mouth frothers. I suspect that some pretty impressive results on a number of fronts may be seen in coming quarters/years....the question is whether to be an investor holding during the bumpy rise, a trader using the inevitable ebbs and flows of that journey, or an opportunist waiting for/until evidence of traction and subsequent is more concrete. No wrong answer IMO. Just as long as it is your own answer. DYOR and GLTA.
