Having now gone back and looked at how things have played out...

Having now gone back and looked at how things have played out over the last 15 years in the industry, i don't think i can justify an investment into SDI. Here's my highly condensed thoughts:

- The spoils of the huge industry growth over the last few decades have gone almost entirely to those players that have achieved scale (e.g. Dentsply, Sirona). These players have achieved scale both via organic and, importantly, acquisition-led growth. This is not at all unusual in any growth market - returns are not evenly distributed and it's usually a few companies that dominate at the expense of the inferior (or dithering) competitors.
- SDI completely missed the acquisitions boat (whether by fault or design) and instead have focused on internal, R&D-led growth. There's talk in SDI's annual reports going back 10-15 years of the huge opportunity in developing markets etc., but clearly they haven't had success in capturing their share (the growth has been won by the roll-up players such as Dentsply and Sirona). I am generally extremely wary of investing on the basis that, all of a sudden, a company is going to "hockey stick" its growth after having dithered for over a decade while the runaway success stories have materially widened their competitive moats (in terms of R&D, product range, distributive capacities, financial capacity etc., the moats the big players have over smaller players like SDI are now nothing short of cavernous).
- To invert the issue, what i find interesting is that SDI has never been itself acquired by the global roll-up players - i wonder why this is? I actually don't know the answer, but i suspect that if SDI had anything the big guys thought of strategic value (e.g. distribution capacity, genuinely differentiated products, superior R&D etc.), they would have been gobbled up quite some time ago.

The only thing that would change my view on SDI would be clear evidence demonstrated over the course of a few years that they are making real inroads (i.e. winning market share) on the major guys. It's clearly not going to be easy for them, given the size of their competitors and the obvious advantages that size brings in this field.

Best of luck to all holders - i'll check in on this one intermittently to see if the competitive landscape changes to SDI's benefit (not beyond the realms of possibility - there is always the risk that large mergers such as Dentsply/Sirona lead to value destruction for those companies, to the benefit of the industry's other players such as SDI).