Tag: delivered

Have Clicks and Bricks Won The Game over Pure E-Commerce

EcommerceApril 12, 2020

First, I will give you my hypothesis answer which is "Yes" it has. Of course, I have been wrong before and will be wrong again but this would be my position going into the discussion. Because of COVID19 we have learned the proper mix of "I need go to the store" with "I can wait to get it delivered". So, yes, my answer is an resounding "Yes".

I see this for three main reasons and in this posting I am going use Amazon as the proxy for e-commerce since it is so dominant in that space. A little background on how this idea started developing. I tweeted the following:

"A casualty of #Covid19 in the Supply chain is going to be #Amazon. With elongated delivery times, missed deliveries and massive counterfeiting, @amazon has become useless. #Bricksandclicks with in-store pick up, curbside car loading and local delivery has won the day.
— 10xLogisticsExperts (@Logisticsexpert) April 11, 2020"

The next morning I opened the Wall Street Journal to an article (Posted at midnight and my tweet was at 10:40pm) titled "Will We Forgive Amazon When This is Over" by Christopher Mims (@Mims, Christopher.mims@wsj.com) (May be Paywall). The theme is the same: At precisely the moment we needed Amazon the most, the model failed and it failed big. There are a couple of key areas where it failed and only one could really have been an "unknown unknown":

Merchandising and Inventory: This is the big "unknown unknown" and we cannot hold Amazon or anyone fully responsible for this as no one could have seen the massive whipsaw / bullwhip which occurred with certain products. We essentially had a "run on the bank" and ran out.

However, the "bricks" portion was able to respond much faster through limiting amount someone can buy, "senior hours" and other tactics (Not the least of which is just public shame if you are walking out with cases of toilet paper). Amazon just could not get ahead of this and still to this day are not ahead. They essentially have shut down all other "non essential" product lines yet I can still get all that stuff through either BOPIS (Buy on line pick up in store) or just in store at the bricks.
No Customer Loyalty: The big question for the e-commerce providers such as Amazon will be whether they invest a lot into their networks to support a crisis like this or do they chalk it up to a "once in a lifetime" crisis and assume everything goes back to normal. I think it will not go back to normal and the pure e-commerce players will lose customers and not gain them.

Take the Amazon Prime program for example. Many hundreds of thousands have paid for years into that program. Yes, you get free delivery but it also is somewhat of a loyalty program as well. As soon as the crisis hit, prime customers were thrown to the curb. By doing that, many prime customers are asking themselves "What am I paying for" and now that they have had the experience of "bricks and clicks", these customers may never come back. I would imagine Amazon will see a decrease in both Prime customers and customers overall.
The Technology Just Did Not Work: This led to a massively poor customer experience that did not have to be. In fact, prior to COVID19 most discussions I have been in have always started with, "If Amazon can do... (Kind of like, "If they can put a man on the moon why can't....)". This will no longer be the case. No one will want to replicate this. I think most give them a pass on the inventory issues but why is their website so screwed up? Why do I have to click 4 times before I find out either the product is out of stock, it is reserved for first responders or the delivery will be two months from now (Why would they even allow it to be displayed)?

The purchase experience has been awful. The great technology has gone haywire and their "hands off the steering wheel" AI systems failed at precisely the time they were needed. I found websites of other "off line" stores to be far more helpful, far more accurate and far more useful. Amazon is going to have reevaluate this entire problem. Their technology just does not appear to be much better.
Counterfeiting: One item the "bricks" stores have is brand reputation. Nothing makes it into a Home Depot, Lowes, Target, or Wal-Mart store without it being properly vetted to safety, service and functionality. The item has to perform as specified. Yes, there will be some warranty claims but not complete failure. The "E-Commerce" world, led by Amazon, has had this "endless aisle" approach and they purposefully do very little vetting. They claim they are a "platform" not a store (Although I think this is mostly "lawyer speak" so they can defend in lawsuits). This has led to massive counterfeits, items which are displayed but never fulfilled, , items which say they will be fulfilled but it may be 2 months from now etc.

What is worse is the e-commerce players want the "wisdom of the crowd" to sort through it all, figure it out with "star ratings" (Which are easily manipulated by the very people doing the counterfeiting) and then report them. The e-commerce people want the buyer to be their merchandiser as well and not pay us. Bad form.

For all these reasons, I believe pure e-commerce will lose business and it will take them a long time to get it back. The "old guard" businesses with store fronts, reputations and really good technology have won this round and a big round it was (and still is)!

Long term readers of mine will not be surprised by this as I wrote two posts a while ago about how the bricks and mortar should win because they can do everything Amazon can do and Amazon cannot do everything they do. I welcomed WalMart up from their long slumber (June 26, 2017) when they finally committed heavily to e-commerce. I then wrote a post on June 3, 2018 titled: Convinced Even More That Wal-Mart Should Be The Winner Against Amazon.

Windlab

SPACSMay 11, 2019

One of the more interesting companies to launch an IPO in the last few years is Windlab, a windfarm development company that was founded in 2003 to commercialise software developed at the CSIRO. Windlab’s proprietary software Windscape overlays atmospheric modelling on geographical features to identify and evaluate potential windfarm sites. In their prospectus they claimed this software gives them a significant advantage over other windfarm development companies, as it enables them to identify sites with high wind resources without conducting costly and lengthy on-site testing. As evidence of this claim, the two windfarms that delivered the highest percentage of their maximum output throughout 2018 are on sites found and developed using windscape, Coonooer Bridge and Kiata both in Victoria.

The company listed in August 2017 on the ASX at $2 a share, equalling a fully diluted market cap of $146.3 million. While initially results were promising, with the company making a profit of $9.5 million in 2017, 2018 has seen a complete reversal of that progress, with revenue dropping from $23.1 million to $3.5 million, and the company making a loss of $3.8 million. As a result, the share price has declined steeply, and is now trading at around $1.04, or a market cap of $77 million.

While for the average company a decline in performance of this magnitude would suggest that something is seriously wrong, I don’t think this is the case for Windlab. Like any company that gains most of its revenue from developments, significant swings in profit from one year to the next are inevitable. The company went from reaching financial close on two windfarm sites in 2017 to one in 2018, and while the failure to reach financial close on a single project was disappointing, it is not surprising given the long timeframes required for most wind farm developments. It is my belief that the market has overreacted to Windlab’s 2018 results due to a misunderstanding or mistrust of the companies operating model, and that at the current share price the company is significantly undervalued.

The Case for Windlab

Renewable energy is going through a difficult time in Australia, with little cohesion between federal and state governments, and new connection requirements making connecting a renewable energy plant to the grid more expensive. However, if you believe that climate change is real, then renewable energy should be one of the fastest growing industries over the next twenty to thirty years. While growth in the efficiency of solar tends to get more attention, Windfarm technology is also improving in efficiency, and nearly all renewable energy experts see wind farms playing a significant role in the transition to renewable energy. On a much shorter time scale, if Labor wins the upcoming federal election the domestic market for renewable energy should improve markedly. Labor has a policy of 50% renewable energy by 2030, and to achieve this the level of investment in wind farm projects in Australia will need to increase exponentially.

Windlab is ideally placed to take advantage of this, as the development of windfarm sites is perhaps the most profitable part of the wind farm industry. From 2014 to 2017 the company managed an average Return On Equity of 42%, in a time that included significant growth and the cost of listing on the ASX.

.	2017	2016	2015
Revenue	$ 24,515,379	$ 18,101,100	$ 10,012,006
Expenses	-$ 10,098,372	-$ 13,023,113	-$ 8,524,804
Profit before income tax	$ 14,417,007	$ 5,077,987	$ 1,487,202
Income tax	-$ 4,912,534	-$ 1,779,491	$ 14,687
Profit	$ 9,504,473	$ 3,298,496	$ 1,501,889
Equity at the start of the year	$ 13,404,230	$ 9,207,680	$ 7,699,065

ROE	71%	36%	20%

Average	42%

The company is able to achieve this sort of ROE as windfarm developments are sold once all approvals and agreements signed but before construction begins, meaning developing multi-million dollar projects does not require significant capital. For example, take the site of the Coonooer bridge wind farm, a 19.8 megawatt wind farm in North Western Victoria with a total development cost of $48.6 million. After identifying the site with Windscape, Windlab spent only $300,000 in acquiring the land, then spent $2.2 million or research and planning applications for a total investment of only $2.5 million. Windlab then sold 96.5% of the equity in the Coonoer Bridge to Eurus Energy for just over $4.7 million who then funded the construction of the site with help from grants from the state government. In total, Windlab walked away from this transaction with over $4.7 million in cash and a remaining 3.5% stake in the project, a return of over 111% on the initial investment.

Valuation

While historically Windlab has sourced most of its revenue from wind farm development, the company also has a growing asset management arm of the business, where they provide asset management services to Wind and Electricity farms, in addition to significant equity in operating and soon to be operating Windfarms. Although historically insignificant when compared to the companies development fees, these sections of the business are quickly growing, and seems to be the managements way of ensuring cashflows are a little more predictable in the future.

In order to accurately value Windlab, I have therefore broken down the company into three separate areas.

Inventory (wind farm development projects)

The book value Windlab gives to its inventory as per the 2019 financials is $9.69M, though this is overly conservative as projects are valued at the lower of their cost or net realisable value. In order to get a more accurate picture of the actual value of Windlab’s inventory, I have tried to assign individual value to some of Windlab’s larger projects.

Lakeland Wind Farm

Lakeland is a 106 megawatt project located in Northern Queensland. While Windlab does not give a breakdown of inventory values, due to its size and stage in the development cycle the Lakeland Wind Farm is probably the single project with the largest value in the companies inventory. Lakeland is also one of the main causes for the decline in share price over the last six months, as the project was scheduled to reach financial close in 2018 until the primary investor pulled out at the last minute. This delay has meant the project is now subject to new requirements to connect to the electricity grid, which will mean significant additional costs to increase the stability of the connection (this is a change to the nation-wide connection criteria for renewable energy plants designed to address unstable supply).

While these setbacks are undeniably concerning, Windlab claims that the delay has also allowed them to re-tender for more efficient turbines and they have not yet impaired the inventory value of the project, something they have done in the past when projects are compromised. As per their latest announcements Windlab are still confident of reaching financial close on this project in 2019.

If successful, Lakeland will be the largest project brought to financial close by Windlab to date, at 106 Megawatts. For Kennedy, a 56 megawatt project, Windlab received a financial close payment of 5.4 million, while keeping 50% equity in the project. If Windlab is to acheive a similar margin and equity structure for Lakeland, this would result in a payment to Windlab of $10.2 million, with the remaining 50% equity in the project worth at least $10.2 million as well, for a total value of $20.4 million. Given the uncertainty around the project though, a 50% discount would seem appropriate, which gives the project a total value of $10.2 million for our calculations.

Miombo Hewani

Another late stage windfarm project for Windlab is the Miombo Hewani windfarm in Tanzania. This 300-megawatt, $750 million project is Windlab’s first foray into East Africa, and is undoubtedly the companies most ambitious yet. The project received approval from the Tanzanian government in July 2018 and will receive partial funding from the Government of Finland. Windlab have not committed to achieving financial close in 2019 for Miombo Hewani which is understandable given the uncertainty of operations in Africa, but as development approval is already in place as well as some funding arrangements, financial close can’t be too far off. Demonstrating the significant potential value of Miombo Hewani and Windlabs other East African investments, Eurus Energy, a Japanese sustainable energy company that has partnered with Windlab in the past recently bought a 25% stake in Windlab’s east African projects for $10 million USD, valuing Windlab’s remaining stake in their East African portfolio of development projects alone at $30 million USD, or $42.2 million AUD. While this may seem excessive, Windlab stated in their prospectus that their target development margin for Windfarm developments is $250,000 per megawatt of capacity, and from 2015 to 2017 the company had overachieved this, with margins of $260,000 to $490,000 per megawatt. If Windlab was to successfully reach financial close on Miombo Hewani at their target development margin, this would result in a payment of $75 million alone. As a result, adopting the value assigned by Eurus Energy of $42.3 million for the companies East African projects seems reasonable.

Greenwich

The last late-stage development project worth noting in this section is the Greenwich Windfarm in the USA. Windlab officially sold the project in 2018, but will only receive the bulk of their payment of $4 million USD (5.6M AUD) when construction begins. While Windlab have stated they expect to receive this payment in 2019, a group of neighbours have mounted a challenge to the project to the Ohio Supreme Court seeking to dispute the approval given by the Ohio Power Board. . Given the uncertainty of the case, it is probably prudent to discount this payment by 50%, which would mean a value of $2.8 million for Greenwich.

While the projects listed above are the most likely to result in some form of payment in the next 12 to 18 months, Windlab has numerous other projects earlier in the development cycle. These include:

640 megawatts of approved potential capacity across multiple projects in South Africa. (While South African Renewable Energy projects have been on hiatus, it does seem the projects are about to get up and running again after a recent change of government
250 megawatt project in Northern Queensland that Windlab is intending to submit a development application for in 2019
230 megawatt project in Vedigre USA that Windlab no longer has control over, but is eligible for up to $4.6 million in success payments if the project reaches financial close.

While an exact value for all of these projects is difficult, I have assigned a value of $15 million for the remainder of Windlab's projects.

Excluding Windlab’s asset management business, which I will cover separately, Windlab spends around $6.4 million a year on project expenses, administration and employees. The projects I have listed above are predominantly expected to reach some form of financial close in the next three years, so it seems logical to assign a cost of $19.2 million, or three years of costs to the above calculations. Once a tax rate of 30% is factored in, you are left with a total inventory value of $35.177 as per the below table.

Project	Value
Lakeland	$ 10,200,000.00
East African projects	$ 42,300,000.00
Greenwich	$ 2,800,000.00
Other projects	$ 15,000,000.00
Total	$ 70,300,000.00
Book value	$ 9,690,000.00
three years of annual costs	$ 19,200,000.00
tax on projected profit	$ 12,423,000.00
Value after tax	$ 38,677,000.00

Operating Wind Farms

Currently Windlab has significant equity in two large operating or soon to be operating Wind Farms, Kiata, in Melbourne’s North West which has now been operating for just over a year, and Kennedy Energy Park in Northern Queensland that has completed construction and will be connected to the grid in the coming months. Both projects were originally found and developed using Windlab’s proprietary technology Windscape, with Windlab then subsequently selling down equity in the project to help fund development. Windlab owns 25% of the Kiata wind farm and 50% of Kennedy, and combined these two projects have a book value of $43.6 million on the Windlab balance sheet.

Kiata is a 30 megawatt 9 turbine windfarm in Northern Victoria that had its first full year of operation in 2018, with a total profit of $4.57 million for the year. Wind farms are thought to have a useful life of roughly 20 years, after which significant refurbishment costs are needed in order to continue operation. If we discount these future cash flows at a rate of 7%, (which seems reasonable given the relative low risk of an established wind farm) we get a total value for Kiata of just under $43.9 million. This values Windlab’s stake at $10.97 million.

To value Kennedy is a little more complex, as it has not yet begun operation. However, we know that the project is a 56-megawatt project, combining 41 megawatts of wind with 15 megawatts of solar. The plant also has 2 megawatts of battery storage to help modulate supply and allow storage of excess energy in non-peak times. If we extrapolate the annual profit per megawatt of capacity of Kiata in 2018 of $152,353 and assign the same discount rate, we are left with a value for Kennedy of $83.6 million, or $41.8 million for Windlab’s 50% ownership.

Combined, this gives a value of $52.86M for these two projects.

Asset management

Windlab’s asset management arm is perhaps the easiest to understand and value. Windlab leverages its expertise by providing ongoing management services to existing wind and solar farms, both that the company has an equity stake in, and to third party independent energy farms or resources. This side of the business is quickly growing, with revenue increasing by 27% in 2018 to $2.97 million, with profit before tax of $610,000, or $427,000 after tax assuming a 30% tax rate. The company signed a significant asset management contract in early 2019 for a solar farm, indicating that they are continuing to grow this business. Given both the significant growth of this area and the broader growth potential of the industry, a P/E ratio of 20 seems coservative, which would value Windlab’s asset management division at 8.5 million.

Software

Lastly, As Windlab has demonstrated ability to use Windscape to develop high-performing Windfarms, it seems only fair to give a value to the Windscape software itself. Windlab is continuing to use this software to identify projects into the future, and the company has proven that this software can provide the company with a significant edge on development projects. While this is a difficult thing to do, $10,000,000 seems like a conservative valuation, considering both Windlab’s historical performance and the likely growth of the energy sector in the future.

Putting it all together

Area	Value
Development Projects	$ 38,677,000.00
Operating wind farms	$ 52,770,000.00
Asset Management business	$ 8,500,000.00
Windscape software	$ 10,000,000.00
Cash	$ 14,622,414.00
Liabilities	-$ 10,755,130.00
Total	$ 113,814,284.00
Shares outstanding (diluted)	73848070
Price	$ 1.54

If we add together the values as per the above calculations, we are left with a total value of $113.8 million for the company, or $1.54. As the company is currently trading around the $1.02 mark, this suggests the company is significantly undervalued at its current price.

From Robots to Crowdsourcing: 6 Top Trends in Last Mile Delivery

Supply Chain & LogisticsMarch 21, 2019

Final mile delivery: for many companies, it’s the most expensive and challenging aspect of getting goods to consumers. Referring to the last stretch of delivery — from a transportation hub or warehouse to the final destination — various logistical issues make last mile delivery a challenge. Navigating...

The post From Robots to Crowdsourcing: 6 Top Trends in Last Mile Delivery first appeared on Ottawa Logistics.

Aurora Labs

SPACSOctober 25, 2018

Aurora Labs is one of a long list of ASX pre-revenue IPO’s that achieved massive gains before crashing when the much-hyped revenue failed to materialize. Listing in August 2016, the stock peaked at just under $4 in February 2017 for a nearly 20X return and then lost 90% of its value over the next year. Recently though, Aurora has been staging somewhat of a comeback. Their shares were trading at around 36 cents in September of this year when they began to release announcements regarding progress with their Large Format Printer. The market reacted with predictable over-exuberance and within a few weeks the stock was back over 90 cents. That investors have willingly jumped back into bed with a company like Aurora is a pretty sad indictment of the Australian small cap market. Aurora’s brief history on the ASX is a tale littered with failed targets, unclear communication and a steadfast refusal to own up to any of their mistakes. It is also a story worth knowing for anyone interested in investing in pre-revenue stocks.

Aurora labs was founded in August 2014 by David Budge, an engineer and product designer from WA when he posted on Facebook that he wanted to start a rocket company. The rocket idea didn’t last long, and the company quickly switched to 3D printing. If you are to believe the official company version of events, within 18 months of that Facebook post Aurora labs developed three separate revolutionary techniques for 3D metal printing with major implications for reducing costs, increasing speed and managing 3D printing software. What exactly these inventions were has never clearly been articulated, but with a message as enticing and marketable as this a public listing was inevitable and by June 2016 Aurora had launched their prospectus to raise $3.5 million.

While the prospectus was largely focused on returns far in the future, a key point in their initial pitch was their Small Format Printer. This printer was designed to be substantially cheaper than their competitors and was apparently already in beta testing with 31 secured pre-sales. The Small Format Printers price was listed in in the prospectus at between $40,000 and $43,000 USD each, so this was a significant amount of sales for such a young company.

The shares listed on the 12^thof August 2016 at $0.20 cents and shot up in value quickly. In December 2016 they announced that they were shipping their first unit of the Small Format Printer to customers and by the 10^th of February 2017 the share price had reached a staggering $3.93, representing returns of just under 1,900% since listing and a market capitalization of over $216 million.

As is the story with many pre-revenue companies though, it was when the revenue was supposed to materialize that the wheels fell off. On their quarterly activities report on the 28^th of April 2017 the company announced that they were now ready to focus on sales, as they had completed the necessary certifications and testing to sell the Small Format Printer internationally. Despite these assurances, cash flows from sales for the March to June period was only $103,000 and dropped to $6,000 for the next quarter. For a company whose product was apparently market leading with a strong order bank of pre-sales this made no sense. How could a company selling 3D printers for $40,000 USD each take revenue of only $6,000 a quarter when they apparently had an order bank of 30 pre-sales to fill?

Investors looking for an answer had to wait until November 2017, when the company finally admitted via a market update that the much-vaunted pre-sales had been sold at a fraction of the current prices. Instead of the $40,000 USD listed in the prospectus, the pre-sale prices were for prices between $7,000 and $9,000 AUD. Given the retail price had now risen to USD $49,999, Aurora labs was now deciding to cancel their pre-sales and refund the prospective customers their deposits.

It is hard to understand how Aurora got away with this announcement without a slap on the wrist from the ASX. Until this announcement Aurora had given no indication that their pre-sales were for anything less than their current proposed price, if anything they had worked hard to give the opposite impression.

The below is a direct screenshot from the prospectus, these two sentences come one after the other:

Any investor reading the above sentences would have naturally assumed the pre-sale prices were somewhere around $40,000 USD. In addition to this quote the pre-sales are mentioned on 6 other occasions in the prospectus, and not once is the fact that the pre-sales were sold at heavily discounted prices disclosed.

After listing, the company continued to mention pre-sales in their announcements. In a January 2017 announcement the company stated that:

For a product that’s main selling point is its cheapness compared to its competitors, how does a sale at less than 25% of the current market price indicate demand from “all corners of the globe?” It is the equivalent of a new phone company using sales of $200 smart phones as evidence for demand of an identical model at $800.

Another obvious question is why Aurora waited until November to dishonour their pre-sales. At the time of their prospectus their retail price was already considerably higher than the pre-sale prices, yet the company waited more than 12 months before deciding to cancel the pre-sale orders. The obvious explanation that they were keeping their pre-sales on the book as long as possible to maintain their share price is hard to overlook.

Even leaving the pre-sales aside, Aurora has made some dramatic promises regarding their Small Format Printer that have failed to materialize. In April 2017, the CEO David Budge gave a speech at an investors conference where he said:

“we’ve pre-sold about 32 machines, andwe’re looking to get up to around about 30 machines a month in the next 3 to 6months at about $50,000 USD a machine.”

A lot of investors took notice of this statement, as if true it meant the company was close to achieving annual revenue of $18 million USD a year from the Small Format Printer alone.

However when their annual report for 2017 was released more than 15 months later, revenue was only $329,970, indicating sales of not even 1 device per month. In typical Australian small cap fashion, not only does the annual report fail to explain why sales were so far off this forecast, it doesn’t even acknowledge that this forecast was made.

You might be wondering at this point why I’m bothering to write about this. Another Micro Cap company played the PR game and managed to pump the share price to a ridiculous valuation with a bunch of promises that they never delivered on. Hardly a unique occurrence for the ASX. It matters because too often the companies getting funding on the ASX seem to be bad companies with good PR departments. A central promise of capitalism is that money can be efficiently allocated from those with money to those who need it. At it’s best, the share market is an effective vehicle for getting money from investors into the hands of companies with great ideas and limited funds. The reality is every dollar spent funding or purchasing a stock of a hype company is a dollar not going to a legitimate pre-revenue company, and there are a lot of legitimate pre-revenue companies out there that desperately need money.

The tendency of companies to make wild predictions also puts pressure on other small business owners looking for investment to be equally optimistic. A friend of mine owns a growing business that has achieved impressive growth of around 40% a year for the last couple of years. Their latest forecasts for 2019 increases this growth to nearly 100% for FY18, yet investors so used to seeing forecasts like Aurora’s remain unimpressed and have asked if there are any ways to increase this. For the industry my friend is in, growth at more than 100% would likely have serious affects on his margins and risk profile, but this is a difficult point to make to investors habituated to start-ups promising multi-million dollar revenues in years.

As investors, we have a responsibility to be more critical when presented with the next slick presentation light on detail but big on promises. If this is asking too much then at the very least we need to ensure that executives of small companies are held accountable for their promises. When a CEO says that he is intending to sell 30 devices a month, he shouldn’t be able to release an annual report 15 months later showing total sales of less than 10 for the year without even bothering to address what went wrong. And when that same CEO starts making chest beating announcements about their latest product, the market’s reaction should be a little more suspicious.

The Evolving Landscape of Final Mile Delivery

EcommerceJuly 6, 2018

As the owner or manager of a business that ships goods to customers, you are likely aware of the pivotal role that dependable delivery services play in your operations. Selecting an efficient final mile delivery provider can be the difference between highly satisfied repeat customers...

The post The Evolving Landscape of Final Mile Delivery first appeared on Ottawa Logistics.

Xinja

SPACSFebruary 4, 2018

A couple of weeks ago, the first six AFS licenses for crowdfunding were issued, paving the way for Australian companies to raise money from retail investors without listing on the ASX. While I usually restrict this blog to reviewing initial offerings of publicly listed companies, I thought it might be interesting to review one of the first crowdfunding offers in Australia to mark the occasion. There’s something to be said for reviewing a company that doesn’t have a public market for its shares, as you are less likely to end up looking like an idiot.

While a few of the crowdfunding platforms are still in the process of setting up their first offers, Equitise seem to have got the early jump on the competition. Their crowdfunding campaign for Xinja, a start-up digital or "Neo" bank, is already live and at time of writing $1.3 million into their 3 million dollar raise.

Xinja has ambitious goals. With the recent weakening of laws regarding setting up banks in Australia, they intend to set up a fully functioning Australian bank, complete with deposit accounts and mortgages.

Just in case you forget this is a crowdfunding offer as opposed to your usual boring IPO, they have put together a pitch video, replete with flashy animations and bubbly tech muzak in addition to the standard offer document and financials. Once you look past the executives in torn jeans and distressed-paint walls, you quickly conclude that the pitch seems entirely devoid of anything original. Xinja’s main claim is that they will be the first “100% digital bank,” offering fully online services with no branches, but ME bank has been offering deposit accounts since 2003 in Australia and has never opened a branch. Another big focus of their pitch is that they will develop tools that nudge customers to make better financial decisions, which seems pretty similar to an advertising campaign NAB has been running for years. While the idea of a new digital bank in Australia is in itself is somewhat interesting, it is a shame that this is as far as they have got in terms of originality. Watching Xinja’s pitch video I’m reminded of that old Yes Prime Minister joke, about how boring speeches should be delivered in modern looking rooms with abstract paintings on the walls to disguise the absence of anything new in the actual speech. These days the modern equivalent I guess is a converted warehouse office space and vague references to blockchain.

What makes this paucity of orginality a particular concern is that the challenge faced by Xinja is enormous. There are good reasons why Australia has been dominated by the same big four banks as long as anyone can remember, and it’s not because no one has ever thought of making banking work on your phone. The pitch seems to promote this idea that the big banks are old tired institutions, with needlessly slow and cumbersome processes, just waiting to be pushed aside by some new start-up. As someone who works in the finance industry I know this is far from reality. Banks are obsessed with innovation and change, and are constantly sinking huge amounts of money into technology to stay ahead of the curve. The simple reality is that banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries in Australia. More often than not, what you find frustrating or slow about a bank’s processes is down to legislative restrictions rather than the banks ineptitude or unwillingness to change.

A lot is made in Xinja’s pitch video of the involvement of the founder of Monzo in Xinja. Monzo is another digital/Neo bank that was set up a few years ago in England. In the pitch Monzo is held up as an example of the success of Neo Banking, but this seems like a ridiculously premature thing to say. While Monzo has been through multiple capital raises at increasingly higher valuations, the reality is Monzo’s revenue for 2017 was a paltry $120,000 vs a loss of 6.8 million. It’s true that Monzo has some interesting ideas and managed to pick up an impressive half a million customers thanks to their zero fee pre-paid cards, but it is still far too early to hold them up as some sort of success. If I started handing out free cup cakes at Flinders Street Station I’d probably run out of cup cakes pretty quickly, but it’s hardly proof of a valid business.

The example of Monzo also gives us a good example of just how much capital is needed to start a bank. According to Crunchbase, since June 2015 Monzo has raised a total of 109 million, and given how far they are off profitability more funding rounds are probably on the cards. At each raise the business valuation has increased, but it does demonstrate just how long the road ahead is for Xinja.

Valuation

While it might be considered a bit boring to talk about something as mundane as valuations and financials in the crowdfunding world, it is probably worth noting that Xinja is raising its $3 million dollar campaign at a $43.1 million dollar valuation, higher than the last 5 ASX IPOs I have reviewed on my bl og.

To be blunt, the $43.1 million market capitalisation is completely ridiculous. Reading the “achievements to date” section of the prospectus it is hard to believe someone was able to write this with a straight face. While bullet points like “we have assembled a committed and exceptional team” and “we have completed 80% of our app” might be acceptable when putting together a slide deck at a hackathon, for a company valuing itself at over $40 million dollars it is downright obscene.

Not only does Xinja have no revenue from customers to date, they don’t even have trial products with customers or a license for any type of banking activities in Australia. They have only raised $7.8 million dollars before this crowdfunding campaign, which means that somehow investors are meant to believe that the other $32.3 million of their valuation has been created by coming up with a company name and hiring a few people.

Even Monzo, which seems to have ridden the hype train of ridiculous valuations pretty well, has been more restrained in their valuations. In October 2016 when Monzo valued itself at $50 million pounds, they had already been granted a restricted banking license and had a prepaid cards with a fully developed app out to 50,000 people. Earlier on, Monzo raised 6 million at only a $30 million valuation in March 2016, but at that time had a working trial pre-paid card out to 1,500 people. In contrast, Xinja has not only not yet released the beta version of their prepaid card, they still don’t even have a banking license.

To provide just one more example of how ridiculous the Xinja valuation is, it is worthwhile to look at the ratio of book to market equity. Banking has always been a capital-intensive business, and post-GFC regulations have only made it more so. This means that profits always require significant amounts of capital. The CBA, for all its market advantages from to being the largest bank in Australia has a book to equity ratio of $0.43. This means for every dollar of CBA shares you purchase, you are getting an entitlement to the earnings of $0.43 cents of equity on the CBA balance sheet. For the Xinja crowdfunding campaign, a bank with no license, revenue or market share, that ratio is only $0.22 cents.

On the Xinja Equitise crowdfunding campaign, the offer is described as a bank job. What they don’t tell you though is you’re the one getting robbed.

Moelis Australia

SPACSApril 4, 2017

Overview

Moelis Australia is the Australian offshoot of Moelis & Company, an American investment bank founded in 2007. Moelis and Company have made a name for themselves as one of the leading “Boutique investment banks,” smaller specialised investment banks that have become increasingly popular since the GFC largely thanks to their perceived ability to give more independent advice. In one of their most impressive wins to date, Moelis and Co was recently announced as the sole lead on what will probably be the biggest IPO in history, the giant Saudi state owned oil company Aramco.

In Australia, Moelis has been similarly successful, though not without controversy. While they have been involved in numerous successful IPO’s, they were also the lead manager for the botched Simonds Group IPO in late 2014, with shares now trading at less than a quarter of their floating price. More recently they have made the news for apparently buying up Slater and Gordon debt at significant discounts, supposedly for some debt for equity scheme they are planning.

After the IPO, Moelis & Co will retain a 40% stake in Moelis Australia and a partnership between the two entities will remain with Ken Moelis himself, the founder of Moelis and Co taking a seat on the board.

IPO details

25 million of a total 125 million shares will be sold through the IPO at $2.35 per share, raising $53.8 Million once the costs of the offer have been taken into account. The Market capitalisation at listing price is $293.8 million, making it one of the biggest Australian IPO’s this year to date.

CEO

The CEO of Moelis Australia is Andrew Pridham, more famous for his role as Chairman of the Sydney Swans and his occasional spats with Eddie Mcguire than for his career as an investment banker. Pridham’s career has been impressive; he was appointed the Managing Director of Investment Banking Australasia for UBS at only 28 and has also held senior roles at JP Morgan before helping start Moelis Australia in 2009. He has been less successful in his ventures into the art collecting world though, making headlines a couple of years back when he purchased what turned out to be a forged painting for 2.5 million dollars. When Melbourne radio hosts started making fun of him about this, Pridham’s response somehow managed to go from victimhood to snobbery in one sentence.

“It’s extremely disappointing but notsurprising these radio jockeys find it appropriate to make fun of any victim ofcrime — me or anyone else. It is of some comfort to me that it is highlyimplausible anyone will ever have the opportunity to defraud any of them of$2.5 million.”

However, as long as Pridham doesn’t decide to turn Moelis Australia into an art gallery, his dubious taste in Australian art shouldn’t trouble potential investors, and overall he seems like a pretty capable and intelligent guy. Also, for the CEO of an investment bank worth nearly three hundred million dollars his salary is quite reasonable, at only $450,000 a year plus bonuses. That he is looking to make most of his money through performance bonuses and increases in the share price is a positive for investors, and something that other recent listings (Wattle Health anyone?) Could learn from.

Expansion plans.

One of the things that worries me about the Moelis Australia IPO is the 44.2 million of the total 58.8 million raised that will be set aside for the vague purpose of “growth capital.” This is expanded upon in another section of the Prospectus with the below statement:

"Moelis Australia is actively assessing a number of strategic asset and business acquisitions. None of these opportunities are certain of proceeding at the date of this Prospectus. Any one of, or a combination of, these acquisitions could result in Moelis Australia applying a substantial part of the Offer proceeds to fund the acquisitions of potential assets or businesses being assessed."

While some investors will see this as a growth opportunity, something about the combination of a CEO with no shortage of self-confidence, a professional services business and statements like this make me a little nervous. As any financial academic or Slate and Gordon stockholder will tell you, business acquisitions by listed companies have a tendency to destroy rather than create shareholder value, and I doubt Pridham is going to be able to sit on his hands for long with $54 million in his pocket. While it’s possible he might make the deal of the century, it’s also possible he might end up biting off more than he can chew.

Significant Investor Visa Funds Program

Another thing that concerns me with the Moelis IPO is its involvement in the Significant Investor Visa Funds Program. This is a program the federal government introduced a while back where Investors who invest over 5 million dollars in approved Australian investments are able to gain an Australian Visa.

These sorts of visa programs have come under a lot of criticism both in Australia and internationally, and in the USA in particular have become a target for fraudulent activities.

Canada cancelled their own program after finding it delivered little benefit and an Australian productivity commission report in 2015 advocated scrapping the program as well, arguing that it led to too many visas being granted to elderly people with limited English skills.

While the current Liberal government appears to be committed to the scheme, you would imagine that all it would take is a change of government or a few highly-publicised scandals for things to change. Moelis themselves appear to be well aware of the risks this would pose to their business, as evidenced by this detailed response of theirs to the 2015 productivity commissions report.

Moelis does not break down the revenue for each separate sector, though the prospectus does state that average assets under management grew from 161 million to 624 million in 2017 largely thanks to this program, so we can assume that if this program was to be cancelled it would have a significant impact on the business.

Valuation

Looking around at most investment banks, they seem to cluster around a P/E of just under 15. Goldman Sachs is currently at 13.96, JP Morgan Chase is at 14.1, and Morgan Stanley is at 14.53. The big four Australian banks have similar P/E ratios. Moelis Australia are no doubt aware of this, and have presented an “adjusted” Price to Earnings ratio of 14.6 in the prospectus. On the surface this makes the valuation seem like a pretty good deal. As a relatively small player, their growth prospects are more significant than the larger banks, so to be priced at the same discount rate would represent a great opportunity. However, this is a good example of when it pays to do your own research before trusting adjusted ratios cooked up by investment bankers. When I divide Moelis Australia’s profit from the 2016 calendar year (9.8 million) by the post-listing market capitalisation of 293.8 million I get a price to earnings ratio of 29.97, more than double the ratio quoted in the prospectus. Although you might think this is because my calculator isn’t as fancy as the ones used at Moelis Australia’s head office, Moelis have actually made two rather questionable adjustments to get this lower ratio.

To start with, while P/E ratios are almost always calculated using previous earnings (trailing twelve months). in Moelis Australia’s adjusted P/E ratio, they have instead used their forecasted Pro Forma earnings for the 2017 calendar year of 16.8 million. While for a small growing company it may make sense to use forecasted earnings in a P/E ratio if the business is just starting, I fail to see how it is justified for an established investment bank with a proposed market capitalisation in the hundreds of millions. Moelis Australia are not planning to change their operations significantly in the next twelve months, so their reason to use forecasted earnings simply seems to be so they can get a more attractive P/E ratio.

The other adjustment they have made is to the price side of the P/E formula. Moelis Australia have taken the odd approach of subtracting the net offer proceeds of 57 million from the market capitalisation for the adjusted formula. This is supposedly justified because their acquisition plans are not included in their projected earnings, though as a potential shareholder, the actual market capitalisation is how the market will evaluate the stock, and the total shares outstanding will determine your share in any future earnings. While P/E ratios are based on earnings from the past and the market value today, by some odd form of wormhole accounting Moelis have ended up presenting a ratio based on future earnings and a market value from the past.

Of course, I’m sure Moelis Australia could wheel out to a batch of highly paid accountants who would explain why the adjustments they made are reasonable and their P/E ratio is accurate, but then again Goldman Sachs had maths PHDs that could explain how CDOs were a great idea in 2006 and we all know how that ended up. I would argue that any future investor would be much better served using the 29.97 figure I calculated when deciding if Moelis Australia is a good investment, as this is how P/E ratios for other companies are quoted.

Verdict

When you use the actual P/E ratio of 29.97 to evaluate the deal, the Moelis Australia IPO looks reasonable, but hardly exciting. If you think that Moelis Australia is a great up and coming Corporate Investment Bank with a proven track record and that Pridham is a genius who will be given the new freedom of 50 odd million dollars in free cash to launch some amazing acquisition, then a P/E ratio double that of the larger investment banks is perhaps reasonable. From my perspective though, the Significant Investor Visa Program is not something I would want any investment of mine relying on long term, and with what I know about the track record of acquisitions, I would probably rather have the cash on the balance sheet invested in an index fund than whatever plan Pridham has cooking up.

BigTinCan

SPACSMarch 8, 2017

Overview

As someone working in business development, I’m used to being called into a room by an executive or manager for a presentation of the new sales tool that is going to reduce our admin/allow us to accurately forecast sales/provide quality leads. 9 times out of 10 it’s a bit of a let down. The tools are rarely demonstrated in a live environment, the data is often inaccurate, and the supposed insights with “machine learning” seems to be nothing more complex than a couple of if arguments in an excel cell. It is for this reason that I was a little sceptical when picking up the prospectus for Bigtincan, a content platform for sales people on mobile devices.

The Bigtincan hub allows companies to selectively push sales content to the mobiles and tablets of sales staff. The idea is that instead of sales people having to hunt through different emails or folders for the presentation or collateral that they need, all content can be accessed from the one hub, with both offline and online capabilities. Bigtincan is seeking to raise 26 million for a fully diluted market capitalisation of 52.34 million once all the various options and are taken into account.

Financials

BigTinCan is currently burning through a lot of money. The total loss in 2016 was nearly 8 million, and based on their own forecast figures they will lose another 5.2 milllion in 2017. In any other sector, trying to argue a company with these sorts of losses is worth over 50 million dollars would be ridiculous but in the tech space this is pretty standard. Any successful tech company you can think of lost huge amounts of money during their growth phase, sometimes for a long time. To use the most recent example, Snapchat’s market capitalisation post listing was around 29 billion dollars, despite losing over 500 million dollars last year.

Taking a closer look at the numbers, the extent of the loses seem more strategic than involuntary. In FY 2016, BigTinCan spent just under 9.5 million on product development and marketing, or 135% of their total revenue, and they plan to spend another 12 million in FY 2017. They could have easily reduced their loses by cutting back in these areas, but as every other tech company knows, the real key to success when you are selling software is scale. It costs nearly the same amount of money to sell a product to a million-people compared to a thousand, and you only get to sell to a million people if you have a great product. The key metric for any young software company is growth, and here Bigtincan does not disappoint. Total revenue was 5.17 million in 2016 and grew 35% to 7.04 million in 2016, with projected revenues of 9.7 million for FY2017.

The one potential problem I found regarding Bigtincan’s financials is whether there is enough available cash to sustain the future losses the business might make. BigTinCan will have 14.421 million dollars cash immediately after the IPO. Given their current and projected loses, there is a reasonable risk that they may need to refinance before they get into the black, which needs to be taken into account when deciding if purchasing these shares make sense.

Product

As someone who is often on the road presenting to customers in my day job, I get the appeal of the Bigtincan Hub. In sales, you are constantly searching through folders and emails for the right presentation or tool that suits the customer you are dealing with, and when you have to do it all on an Ipad it becomes even harder. A centralised hub that can deal with a range of different file types, allow commentary and collaboration, and let managers push files to different users has definite appeal.

What’s more, from all the research I have done, it seems the BigtinCan Hub has delivered as well. Most reviews they have received are pretty positive, and they have received some impressive testimonials from large customers.

Perhaps the most impressive write-up comes from Bowery Capital, a venture capitalist firm that publishes an exhaustive summary of all software tools for start-up sales organizations every year. In their latest piece, Bigtincan receives the best rating out of the 13 other companies in the “content sharing space.”

The only reservation I have with the Bigtincan hub is that it is targeted to address a very specific need. What happens if in a couple of years’ time, Google, Apple or Microsoft release something that can do everything that Bigtincan can do and more? Given the natural advantages these larger companies have, it would probably be the end of Bigtincan. Of course, the more palatable outcome is one of these companies deciding they want to acquire Bigtincan by buying out shareholders at a healthy premium over market price, so there is upside to this possibility as well.

Past court cases

Buried in the financial section of the prospectus is a small note that there were two court cases that had an impact on the Statutory profit and loss for the last two years. As investing in a company with a troubled legal history is an alarming prospect, I decided to do some digging to see if I could find out more about this.

The first court case was a dispute with an early director called David Ramsay. From what I can understand from Bigtinc an’s version of events, David Ramsey was given money to develop software for Bigtincan which he then used instead to develop an app for his own company. It appears Bigtincan won this case and Ramsey had to pay $300,000 in damages as a result. While Ramsey has tried to appeal this, it looks like his appeal to the high court was rejected. so it seems this chapter at least is closed.

The second case was with an American Software company called Artifex, which filled a lawsuit against Bigtincan over the use of technology that let users edit Microsoft office documents on their smart phone. Bigtincan reached a confidential settlement with Artifex over this matter, so we do not know the exact outcome, but as Bigtincan has continued to grow since then we can assume that whatever concessions were made did not have a major impact on the Bigtincan business.

I don’t really see any major cause for concern with either of these court cases. Given the potential money at stake, it seems inevitable that software companies get into squabbles about proprietary technology, and most successful tech companies have a story of some estranged director or other in their past, if only to give Aaron Sorkin and Ashton Kutcher material.

Price

Evaluating Bigtincan’s listing price is a more complex than for most companies, as I was unable to rely on a basic Price to Earnings ratio to get a feel for what would be reasonable. Instead, I decided to use price to revenue as an alternative as nearly all software companies list at a loss.

Based on these figures, the Bigtincan valuation seems pretty reasonable. Total revenue from the 2016 calendar year was 7.934 million vs a fully diluted market cap of 52.34 million, giving a Price to Revenue ration of 6.6. Linkedin’s initial listing was at a Price to Revenue ratio of 56 and Salesforce’s was around 11 (this was back in 2004 when internet companies were viewed with suspicion). Closer to home, Xero the New Zealand based accounting software company listed on the ASX in 2012 with a price to revenue ratio of 25.

In addition to comparing Bigtincan to other technology IPOs, I have modelled the next five years after 2017 to try and get an idea of where Bigtincan could end up, assigning different growth rates to their main revenue and expense areas.

Based on the assumptions I have made (and I accept that many will disagree with a lot of these) the company will have an EBITDA of 4.4 million in 2022. To me this is very compelling. I do not think I have been overly optimistic with the growth rates I have used, and you do not have to be Warren Buffett to know that a fast growing SaaS company earning 4.4 million dollars a year will be closer in market capitalisation to 150 million than 50 million.

Verdict

There are significant risks with this IPO. Bigtincan is still a young company operating in a competitive environment, and all it would take is a change in industry direction or a better product from a larger tech company to end their prospects completely. However, the potential upside if things go to plan is pretty substantial, and for me the price is low enough to justify getting involved.