Have you considered that they may want the CFO to be located in Head Office now in San Francisco, and Stephen might not want to move there.
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Plexure Launches New Solution at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
Plexure -- formerly known as VMob -- today announced details of its newest solution for retailers and QSRs. Unveiled at the 2016 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto, the key components of the robust solution weave together measurement, intelligence and engagement to help businesses optimize transactions in the new world of brick-and-mortar meets IoT.
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/-2141953.htm
That will likely be the integration of Microsoft Cortana intelligence and machine learning capability into the base platform. Jmo.
Sure, could be many reasons. We'll never know. Probably is nothing, hopefully it doesn't point to issues with leadership/management (though clashes happen), but a distraction nonetheless. Better they focus on hitting those targets than dealing with CFO's that can't stick around.
Certainly not as much PleXXXure as I'm getting from reading this thread!
certainly doesn't look good on the company and his own CV..
can we request more explanation as a shareholder?
VMob / Plexure Head Office is in San Francisco.
Attachment 8168
Attachment 8167
Attachment 8166
the notice of resignation was labelled (https://www.nzx.com/companies/VML/announcements/285645)"Change of Senior Manager"
Using the word "change" implies that there is a replacement in place - ( eg: someone left and someone has replaced them. )
This is not a change in Senior Manager - that is a resignation and should be correctly labelled as such.
Now we can only speculate as to why Stephen Davies resigned- there were no reasons given at all in the announcement.
here is an example from SKC - very similar format but correctly labelled as a resignation also a reason for leaving was given.
https://www.nzx.com/companies/SKC/announcements/285701
Baa Baa - Vmob or more appropriately, backdoor listed PleXXXure along with its sister company from the same stable, Snakk will be subjected to greater skepticism and scrutiny simply because they were brought to the market when there was hype which allowed them to backdoor list.
Very unsatisfactory to have 3 CFOs in less than 2 years - better explanation from company is required but please do not hold your breath.
If it has only recently been decided to base the finance unit in SF, then a likely underlying issue for Stephen will have been obtaining a work visa. It's almost impossible, unless you have worked outside of the USA for the parent company for a continuous 12 months prior to entry, or you are Australian. Stephen is not an Australian. There are green card options (again, nearly impossible to obtain on a timely basis) or the Company needs to prove to Immigration that no-one already resident in the USA can fill the role. I personally have been through this process. The pragmatic outcome was, and is usually, a parting of the ways.
Seems like deja vu, all over again :cool:
This just doesn't make sense to me. If they really are basing the finance unit in SF, why didn't they think about this when they were hiring Stephen. They only hired him in February! Five months ago.
And if the visa really is the problem, can they not wait another 7 months and then apply for the visa?
I feel like any way I look at the visa situation, it makes VMob look incompetent if true. Hire a CFO and then drastically change the working conditions a few months later?
It seems much more likely to me that the hire just hasn't worked out (for whatever reason).
Have you noticed the prominent Microsoft advertising on the latest high quality marketing videos? I think we can guess whose contributing to funding the rebranding and new marketing materials.
http://www.plexure.com - check out the videos, especially the 'Customer Experience' one which refers to the business results they're getting with IKEA.
Attachment 8171
Join the dots on this.
I bet Microsoft don't give a diddly how VML got listed, or even that the reverse listing shareholders are gone, or anything really except VMob/Plexure are rapidly growing revenue and becoming a cornerstone product in the Microsoft large retail customer offerings and a front runner in the Internet of Things.
Microsoft permits and allows any number of firms (big, small, successful or otherwise) in the world using its software and services to co-brand and co-advertise. IBM likewise.
Even in little ole NZ.
https://www.microsoft.com/nz/partnerawards/
Marketing 101 : Price versus Value.
AZURE and AWS are in a deep battle fighting for cloud supremacy.
AWS continue's to cut prices.... AZURE continue's to match those cuts.
At some point you need to start marketing your value proposition. VML provides some pretty unique case studies for AZURE to do this.
Microsoft supporting VML is less about VML and more about growing Microsoft's multi billion $ platform strategy to the thousands of developers around the world.
Case in point - a contract managing the server requirements for the new POKEMON GO apps would probably be 10 x what Microsoft earns from VML.
Good day for VML today up 5.9% - big order through at 16:16 of 350 shares to lift the price to .36
a mighty order indeed, long may it continue
350 shares to lift the sp by 5.9% - PleXXXure showing off its backdoor ways again? :D
the name change is waste of time.., they need to focus on turning the operation into profitable first ...before spending on something not important
Just changed the thread title.
So they are calling themselves Plexure now are they?
Is it going to drastically up their revenue and cut their losses?
By one of those many co-incidences in my life (you would find it hard to believe what happened in China a couple of weeks ago), Plexure is also the name of a Singapore company that I know very well. But they operate in a different bit of the IT world.
Best Wishes
Paper Tiger
Go on PT, what happened in China? You big tease.
can we have some market update from them? i can't remember when was the last time they gave us updates on new clients, sales Etc...
Journey to the West:
The scene is a four berth sleeping compartment on an overnight train in China, the train is yet to leave the station.
After a quick exploration of the carriage and to fill the jug from the hot water dispenser I arrive back at said compartment.
The Chinese man, though he speaks more English than we do Chinese, we do not have sufficient language in common to talk to, is looking at his smartphone and my partner is conversing with the newly arrived fourth occupant, a young woman of European descent.
She turns to me, a momentary look of surprise appears on her face and she says:
"Hello, your Paper Tiger, June Smith (good friend and not her real name) said I should talk to you about X when I get to Kuala Lumpur...".
I interrupt with "You must be Kate (also not her real name) then. Good to meet you".
Best Wishes
Paper Tiger
WINZ dont pay me nought, Im a brikie is I
https://www.google.co.nz/url?url=htt...Hki1z3SIjRGndg
Baabaa, you deleted your post on another thread re PLX trading at unrealistic multiples
It seems that revenue multiples for SaaS companies are shrinking. I saw one comment that for a company the size of PLX with its current run rate 3.5 to 4.5 times is the going rate
On March numbers PLX about 5 times, so roll on a few months maybe 30 cents for PLX is about right.
Just an observation
I hope klid doesn't change the code on stockastic though
What a shocker to open the site and see 'PleXXXure' headlined!
Bad bad choice for a name if ever there was one.
You need to look at growth as well. Xero is trading on about 10 which was validated when Netsuite was purchased by Oracle at a similar multiple even though it had a lower growth rate.
PLX is still growing at 100% isn't it in which case a multiple above 5 is justified (if you think it will keep growing fast).
Not relevant to use March figures imo, if you use the September guidance of $10m ACMR today's SP at $0.30 equates to lowly 2.8x ACMR multiple, which is just over half the value of a conservative 5x multiple which would put the SP at $0.55 so currently trading at around 45% discount. Great value, good time to accumulate.
Market update is out: https://nzx.com/files/attachments/240564.pdf
"We currently anticipate that the projected $10m of ACMR is more likely to be achieved by the end of the fourth calendar quarter, rather than the end of September 2016 as advised in the market update of 13 April 2016 ,” said Plexure Chairman Phil Norman.
Not much volume PLX shares lately
Maybe punters don't know it exists
no good news since beginning of this year, hard to keep people interested.
Disc, still holding my lot at 0.43 and trying to forget about it.
While the ACMR target has been pushed out by 3 months it is unlikely the growth in costs will have slowed.
Unless they really pull out some big signings between now the end of the year loss at half year results will be a lot larger than it should be.
Combine this with a CFO been and gone in a short time....
Good news .25 might hold as support . Could be an opportunity. Is it in a down trend though?
Maybe I should wait until December for the results and see of they get some runs on the board and back in an uptrend. PLX could be the toast of the NZX for 2017????????????
It is sad the price down to 25 cents. Any reason to continue holding? It seems no more positive information.
There growth is still good and their EV/Rev ratio looks good. Their customers are big and therefore growth is lumpy, so a small deferment for 3 months shouldn't be a major. What would be good to see is another trial with a big co so that we know they have a pipeline fo work going forward. The other issue with big customers is churn and if you lose one client, that can be a substantial piece of income.
I'm still optimistic.
I was optimistic, but..... the second half of the last financial year showed bugger all growth in ACMR and then we got targets pushed out to the second half of the current financial year.
A few buys earlier this month to prop up the share price - not a good look.
I feel investors could end up getting smashed heavily once costs are published for the first 6 months.... and ACMR growth is again pushed out further.
I'm not sure this company was worthy of an NZX mainboard listing.
"The contracted SaaS fee is approximately NZ$500,000 of Annualised Committed Monthly Revenue."
What does it mean? Is the SaaS fee $500K monthly-based or annual-based?
Not quite like that since different countries have different amount of stores and so the fee will vary in size.
If Canada has 1443 stores and it will cost them $500,000, then US who have ten times that amount will bring in $5 million. Lets do a break down. *numbers are rounded as this is merely an estimate.
Japan - $1 million
Sweden -$80,000
USA - $5 million
Netherlands - $85,000
Estonia - $3,500
Latvia - $3,600
Lithuania - $3,500
Total estimate would be around = 6,175,600
If you look at annual statement ending march it was $5.3 million, so getting relatively close to that, expecting quite a few more big roll outs with other brands or more Mcdonald ones.
McD's can't contract Plexure/Microsoft out of the QSR market in Toto. Plexure is a 'platform' that hosts their clients unique marketing programs. McD's could certainly contract for "don't copy our unique marketing program" but they couldn't contract Plexure to not host anyone else's marketing program on their platform. That would be like saying I run my unique business on Xero so Xero can't host any other businesses.
Their service isn't limited to QSR, they have customers like IKEA, 7Eleven and Anheuser-Busch who they have already done some work for, which would have bought in good revenue too. Its a question if they can get bigger contracts from those brands and other brands they maybe in talks with.
Of course they can. For the right to earn yourself a McDonald's global supplier agreement, we want X number of years competitor advantage in the QSR marketspace.
As per their news release a few years back :
"Separately, the company signed a commercial agreement with McDonald's providing access to 119 markets where the world's biggest fastfood chain operates, and with an immediate roll-out in the US, it said. The terms of the deal are confidential, but build on existing relationship VMob has built with McDonald's in the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan, it said."
When VMob struck that agreement, they were struggling to make $500k a year revenue. This 1 brand alone was worth $10 million in revenue.
After 2.5 years of rolling out country after country for McDonald's..... I would have expected to see at least 1 other QSR brand start to appear on VML's client list.
Dominoe's, Pizza Hut, Hungry Jacks, Burger King, KFC, Wendy's etc etc. Nothing.
Completely unrelated, but if I didn't' know anything about Plexure, I was assume that it was a company that makes personal lubricants.
Just revisiting PLX.
Chart says all is not well?
No pleasure for shareholders.!
Another customer and $550k ACMR. :)
Would anyone hazard a guess at what company in South America (in PLX target markets) would have a footprint similar to McDonalds Canada?
Where did McDonalds Canada come from???
Are you reading a different press release?
https://nzx.com/files/attachments/244366.pdf
Well I went through most of the major food brands in South America and didn't come up with much as they are generally around 100-300 in stores. Possible food retailers when narrowed down were:
Bob's located in Brazil with over 1000 stores.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s
Habibs has 475 stores (possible but for that cash figure less likely)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib%27s
Good work!
... theres also Walmart (! OMG) .. 965 total stores across Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Wishful thinking probably, but Walmart has 11,500 stores worldwide in 28 countries with FY 2016 revenue of $482.1 billion - the largest retailer in the world.
Edit: Walmart are already a Microsoft Azure customer.
Wouldn't that be a coup! Back to reality though, we just don't know. Sigh.
More progress, rolling out 19 Compass sites $330k ACMR. That's $1.38m new ACMR in just a few weeks with Compass group, Canada McD's and the unnamed new customer.
Good progress and they are still saying they will get to $10m acmr. They must be something decent in the pipeline which is taking a while to come to fruition and we can look forward to that announcement. Also interesting to note that the monthly burn is down somewhat. So we are now in the fourth quarter. Half year close off coming. Hopefully a brighter few months ahead
Still follow Plexure but still can't convince myself that they really are going to take the world by storm. They don't seem to be that unique and I still cant come to grips how they monetize all these millions of consumer engagement points - or are they only selling the software/apps
However ACMR is gradually creeping up to that magical $10m mark and this IoT driven CRM is obviously the future.
You have to be impressed with some of the numbers they tout on their website from real life case studies (I think) such as -
- generated a 47% increase in average transaction value
- increased number of weekly customers by 10.6%.
- 50% uplift in in-store engagement
- an 8% uplift in impulse purchases
- use of beacons and push messages resulted in AMWMU being up 79.2%
Something must be working.
Watch this video: https://vimeo.com/172996869
What company wouldn't want software like this?
Their big-name clients seem to back this up as well. But a great product still needs a great team to sell it. For me, still too early to know if Plexure has the ability to pull this off. Maybe once they hit that $10m ACMR and pick up a few more customers?
The monetise from the business, not the consumers. Businesses will pay for data about their customers, increased engagement by their customers, increased sales to their customers.
Think about the employee that Dominoes pizza sends outside to wave a big sign advertising $5 pizza. PLX can do that a lot cheaper, with better reach and with increased data:
- imagine if you had data on all the people that saw that sign
- imagine if you could show a different sign to each person who saw it depending on their past habits
[QUOTE=Harvey Specter;639284
Think about the employee that Dominoes pizza sends outside to wave a big sign advertising $5 pizza. PLX can do that a lot cheaper, with better reach and with increased data:
- imagine if you had data on all the people that saw that sign
- imagine if you could show a different sign to each person who saw it depending on their past habits[/QUOTE]
Good analogy!
Actually, based on what you have written - both Facebook and Google can already accomplish these tasks.
PLX as I understand it - is a combination of a customer intelligence dashboard built around user purchases / engagement using a brands APP. The incentive to use the app is the voucher system that is tied into PLX system. This is why PLX cannot implement their solution if a brand does not have an APP, something we were made aware of when McDonald's USA roll-out was delayed.
My understand is the App gives the direct link between the company and the consumer meaning the info gathered is more accurate and linked to purchases, location.
Google/facebook dont track your location and purchases to the same level of detail. ie. it cant push you a message when you enter a store but the PLX linked app can.
I believe, and I could be wrong, but based on what I saw on their old website before the recent rebranding, they sell their services as a package, so think gold, silver, bronze, etc. A company like McDonald's Canada may be paying $500,000 a year for the what might be the gold package. Smaller companies may pay $100,000 pa and only get the silver package, which may mean fewer features or smaller rollout. Something along those lines.
Waiting to be corrected if I got this completely wrong....
Yep the app is the link. But how you use the app is dependant on the retail stores strategy.
For McDonald's, the app and the 'offers' I would think are based around getting you into the store. It's pointless offering you a discount as you arrive as you were already committed to buying a McDonald's order.
However an Ikea might be different.... if the app knows you purchased a couch last month.... as you roam the store you might get an alert to give you 10% off cushions. But the app would need to be tied to a loyalty application to pull this data together.
Beacon technology which is used to locate your phone within a store is nothing new. The marketing power that it can offer a brand is really dependant on that brands customer loyalty. And this is mainly to do with privacy.
Back to Facebook, over 80% of Facebook usage is on a mobile phone, mostly using their app. So they know who you are etc.
Likewise, a lot of e-commerce stores are heavily tagged up with Facebook 'pixels' which links your online transactions back to your Facebook profile. Via the Audience segmentation tools within Facebook, you can actually link your advertising to specific audiences built around past e-commerce orders.
At this point, the only way Facebook could know your in a store is if you "Check-In". If they ever decided to open that 1 little function alone, that's a whole new level of business that would just open up overnight.
ie I go to the movies and Check In into Hoyts Sylvia Park. Facebook notices that your tickets were purchased on the Hoyts mobi website via an advertisement on their newsfeed 2 days ago. This means you probably don't have any food purchases from the candy bar, so you get an offer for a free ice-cream with every pop-corn purchase.
Or maybe PLX will work out how to integrate this into their platform for facebook??!! The world of convergence.
My guess is their waiting for a lot more check-in data around retail footprints so they don't have to use beacons.
Snakk Media is already pinpointing users within a few feet of their GPS.
If Facebook can open this service up without beacon's, they are essentially leap frogging the industry.