By the way, here in Adelaide I have a son and daughter going to two different private schools and both schools allow all smart phones in school with no requirement to turn them off during school hours. My daughter has friends in two different public schools that also allow phones. I don't personally know of any schools with a ban on phones but obviously NSW has the public school ban - which I don't yet know if that includes Spacetalk. There are plenty of schools without any ban.
While I'm sure a ban at a school will be a factor that a parent will consider in a decision to buy Spacetalk, it won't necessary be a deal breaker for those parents. After all, sales are still going through in NSW JB stores. The seven days to Thursday (first week of Feb), monitoring JB's site showed Westfield Sydney had the best sales (four sold) of the 13 stores nationwide that I monitor. Modbury SA, Adelaide, Elizabeth St Melbourne and Hobart all sold three each. Gepps Cross and Mile SA, two other Sydney stores and Hobart are all now showing zero stock for all colours. Zero stock showing on click and collect means they are low on stock (maybe at zero, maybe a few left) so those stores showing zero for at least one colour may have sold more than what can be counted using this method. I.e. this method can only show the minimum number sold. I only have two of 13 stores that still hold all four colours. Most other stores show zero for at least 2 colours. Sales are still going strong in the last week of Jan and in the first week of Feb - including in NSW.
I was expecting a big drop in January after big sales in Dec and then a drop in Feb of at least 50% from Jan levels as the sale ended on the last day of Jan. After that drop, I then expected to see a steady gain quarter on quarter for same store sales, similar to the qtr on qtr gains seen last year. December sales were not as big as some here might have hoped for but based on monitoring JB click and collect levels across the 13 stores I monitor, sales for the last week of Jan were much stronger than I expected and close to in line with December and Feb only saw a 27% drop in numbers from the numbers sold during the sale promotion. That's much better than I was hoping for as that is post Christmas and post New year sales. It should have been a dead week for sales. The average for that first week of Feb across 10 of the 13 stores was 2.3/store (and that would be a minimum as explained above). I could only monitor 10 of 13 stores for that week because the others showed zero stock for 3 or all 4 colours from the prior week. They may have had some stock but I couldn't see how many of those colours they sold. I know this isn't going to be too accurate but extrapolated across the 197 stores, that is 453 watches and if the next 3 weeks show similar numbers, that is a rate of 1968 watches per month. That excludes JB online sales, Spark NZ and Leading Edge sales and also excludes Allmytribe sales. Just the 453 watches over seven days is a rate of 23,625 watches annualised for what might have been the slowest week of the year now that Christmas is over and New Year sales finished.
We know 9,000 were shipped to B&M for Nov and Dec. We also know that most of JB stock had been sold out well before Christmas. So I'm estimating a minimum of 7,500 were sold by B&M in Nov and Dec. The evidence I have shows most of that was sold in the first 3 weeks of Dec. I would think at least 5,000 over those 3 weeks (and while it's meaningless to annualize pre-Christmas sales, that would be a rate of 87,000/yr). From the graphs from Applyzer and my monitoring of JB sales, I estimate sales for JB B&M only, Jan numbers at a minimum 2,700. Then assuming numbers continue at 2,000 per month with no growth (based on what I saw for the first week of Feb), I arrive at the following;
JB B&M sales only; Dec 5,000 Jan 2,700 Feb-Nov 2,000 per month (conservatively applying no growth for same store sales from Feb to Nov). Total JB B&M only; 27,700 per year based on current numbers and estimates. Add 20% for JB on line sales which might be higher considering the stores are regularly sold out, Tot JB sales 33,240/yr Leading Edge 1,000/yr -pure (but hopefully very conservative) guess - as I have no idea Spark at 20% of JB numbers; 6,648 (based on relative populations but evidence from Applyzer suggests NZ sales per head may be much better than Aus so could be quite conservative) Allmytribe 3,500 based on previously announced actual rate of sales of 3152/yr and assuming some growth.
Total from all sources is 44,400 watches/yr. I think this is going to be conservative and it excludes any potential sales to any new stores after JB's exclusivity ends this month. It also excludes sales to the UK which, based on population differences, could add another 90,000 watches over its first 12 months for a total of 134,000 watches annualised sales. That ignores any potential to sell to other European countries which itself adds a buffer to these numbers in case UK sales are not as good as Aus sales on a per head of population basis. So all evidence to date conservatively suggests 44,000 watches per year for AUS/NZ and probably at least 130,000 per year including UK and all assuming no same store growth qtr on qtr while last years sales showed strong growth and independent research from Gartner (and common sense) predicts very strong growth for the sector.
MWR Price at posting:
$3.34 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held