...hmmm...including the fact that in the outlook that the directors are trying to prop up the price again I think this is ill. Seen this strategy before from TCN... directors are buying but but none of the management team does - this is out of whack. Sounds like they manipulate this? Do they publish when management can buy and how much... can't see it... and would expect it if they were able too invest....
I'd want my management team fully engaged - like John Chambers and Cisco (Stateeker Tech partner) - so one directly impacts the other. Do the directors buy to prop up shares, or buy after preliminary results are known internally? Insider trading I know but there have been scares before right?
Either is bad is it not?
The former is to bolster share price on market sensitive info, the later latter the same? Still keen to know the underlying fundamentals and no one has come forward so I assume there are none. I do not buy into the dividend percentage. Statseeker almost doubled revenue of TCN, but yet to see doubling in EBITDA... why? No way I would have bought that except for growth....where is it? A PE firm buying less than 30% per annum for 3 years would be bizarre... so what happened? ( other than the publicised management restructure which has prove LAME)
So that means nothing other than half the performance does it not...? I feel there is a play. If SS is to pay back 2.0 million in 18 months then nothing is happening there - looks like NBC got involved and wanted them to cash cow the financing back to their financiers... can't see this issue in techniche's needs. So who really runs TCN - Jacoby or NBC or the new CEO. Keen to know?
Statseeker is at Cisco Live - their biggest event in the US again according to their website - looks like its pretty quiet from the twitter pictures and comments on the net.... 2 years ago and for 5 years before that they stopped the words biggest networking show with thousands of entrants.... something the management of the then day pioneered from what I understand after asking around.... and now it looks dead (check the blogs and pics under Frank Williams for the last 2 years - no crowds, no growth, except price increases and exchange rate,..... nothing)?
Has the new CEO and marketing team blown it? Or perhaps the MD who has been the for almost the full time proved utterly useless? It used to be a car given away, platinum sponsorship, thousands of entrants and a show stopping event. Now it loots like a $5000 cheque (hope they are paying Us tax on that as I got burnt on that years ago) and a few VR devices. Lame. Funny how a new CEO with an Accounting background misses the point - After 25 years working with the Us the continued improvement in an important event they now shrink? And this year AkiPS is there.... the old founder of Statseeker - attending with a few others to steal statskeer's mantle of massive scalability...so I wonder how they (statseeker) are doing? Btw - TCN is exciting.... more data... faster... less overhead. If they sold shares I would buy...
As mentioned I was in IT so I understand this.... specifically in networking. My feedback is that they - TCN management - have completely missed the boat. Statseeker has no unique offering. AKips has beaten them to the punch. Cisco seems haphazard, and they - SS - has remove all the people who knew what networking was about.... To prove then just take a look at linked in - CEO, CTO, COO, VP sales, Sales Mangerer, Channel manager, Territory manager, business Transformation manager, finance manager - all gone. Most of them with 10 years experience down to graduates... cost cutting worries?
I do not see a board with IT experience in any of the members... not true IT. Feedback from Statseeker competitors is that they are getting creamed (see +Reddit et al) and no one is interested in the price increases or ridiculous claims of a new release. To me this bodes ill... especially since there is nothing from Urgent.. and nothing from ERST.... to fix they need to get someone form the nppm industry and they are rate - especially out of the Us and hugely expensive.
TCN comes from regional manufacutring in Tamworth, NBC from food in QLd... but who comes from IT???
.... if anything saves TCN it will be cash from the German businesses - ERST ... but always this will be BAU multiplied by exchange rate so how long before the CEO there has had enough? Its a middleware product that is hard to expand... they provide a software solution to BP and one other client that meets internal requirements - how do you sell that?....
....so given the board is full of people who sank the ambulance company in Tamworth (see Jakab) and killed Aunger, Sargents and a number of others (including water tanks in the drought - see NBC Capital articles ) then I am still unimpressed. These are all my impressions and this might be my last post. I feel that whilst the opportunity was fantastic the board was incompetent to execute. Please do not attack my judgment - its simply meant to give you my opinion for a better investment position. As it is... my money is going into a sock... or god forbid... and term deposit.. happy as always to be educated... but please beware, I feel in 18 months my predcitions will be true.
Prediction:
- YonY performance down 10% desotie heavy price increases from SS we never see and exchange rate benefits. Will shrink in year after.
- Year on yer Rev down 30% due to lactlustre sales in all businesses.
- TCN + NBC divests Statseeker in a fire sale.... TCN keeps ERST and Urgent. ERST continues the cash cow until BP in-sources in 2018 and the business folds.
I know a lot of investors use different metrics... but I invest in companies that will be around long term or who grow,....
FW
Sentiment -Sell..... take what you can, when you can.... One of these businesses failing will be enough....
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