Giving management a bit of a kick in the pants here is fair enough in the circumstances, but i'm still not sure how well-placed SDI is to compete longer term given the market dynamics, regardless of who's managing it.
Dental consumables/equipment is a game that naturally favours scaled players - significant R&D is required to keep up, and then significant marketing dollars are required to sell the product. The "helicopter view" of the industry's evolution over the last 5-10 years essentially is:
- The suppliers have aggregated/consolidated significantly - giants like Dentsply, Danaher etc. are agglomerations of various smaller rivals that have been acquired over the years; and
- End customers (dentists) are also increasingly consolidating from owner/operator to corporate vehicles, i assume at least partly in response to the aggregation of the suppliers (i.e. to give the dental operator buying power against the increasingly consolidated supplier industry).
I knew this (
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/an...2708998/page-22?post_id=17174075#.Wk77tt-WZPY) but elected to buy anyway effectively because a) the stock was cheap enough, and b) the underlying market growth of dental consumables, i thought, was sufficient to offset the presumably eroding competitive position of SDI.
I probably should've heeded my own advice and done nothing, but i'm here now and still no closer to resolving my own issue.
