Batm Advanced Communicat... Share Discussion Threads

[resistance1] 01/7/2024 11:37

On acquisitions the current share price doesn’t add to the Company’s clout in negotiations and debt financing. Makes Moti’s life more difficult I would assume.

[kooba] 01/7/2024 10:22

Thats quite a bit of influence as it goes and one must presume he exerted that influence on the approval of his long term sidekick Moti to the CEO role. i dislike cfo to ceo moves ..they often don't work and with zvi staying on the board makes it worse. CEO's should make clean breaks..it's very difficult to effect change when they sit at the table.Moti was cfo for 8 years before moving to ceo..he is likely as responsible for the convoluted structure as Zvi..he is not a new broom..far from it.There is little to no independence on the board otherwise Zvi's presence bright be less impactful ..but the Chair. Dr. Chitayat joined the Board of BATM in June 2010 and was appointed Chairman in January 2015. He was re-elected as a Director of the Board in July 2023.Has been on board for 14 years far longer than recognised as independent and has been chair for 9 years ..the maximum recommended time as a chair of a uk listed entity.They were over 50p when he joined the board 14 years ago!

[echoridge] 01/7/2024 10:00

I reckon he's still got me blocked, so would someone please tell carpet to take the short-term 'win' as new management have so far failed to deliver on their plans as he 'predicted', and not start dipping back into his old bag of baseless, nonsense conspiracy theories about Zvi and his shadowy influence, that got him into trouble in the past. Zvi's removal as CEO/executive chairman was a thorough defenestration and a victory for shareholder activism, at least at the time. He has no influence on the company's direction or strategy beyond his non-executive board position and/or his potential influence as a large shareholder. Period.

[car1pet] 01/7/2024 09:33

to put things in perspective this is a very small company. a good "turn around" CEO would sort it out in 6 months. I've been saying it for years. Marom is a technician and pulls the strings sadly he has no clue how to run a profitable business. He needs to walk away completely and let new blood decide on strategy

[kooba] 01/7/2024 09:07

I still think the idea that they have missed the boat re acquisition is fair..they needed a deal last year ( actually earlier) They have limited firepower and cant use their paper so 18 months after it was probably a great idea to buy another telecoms equipment distributor in the US...Rather like the Telco deal itself all those years ago ..it is getting rather late to be finding a route to ma sales channel in a ever more congested marketplace..time is not on their side however effective their product.

[resistance1] 01/7/2024 08:59

In relation to Echo’s point. They would be looking for a US based networking hardware or software vendor (rather than a manufacturer/developer.) So great CTO contacts amongst S&P 500 companies. Although expensive not in the same price ballpark as an original equipment manufacturer I would suppose.

[kooba] 01/7/2024 08:56

Agree on all..The share price is discounting more poor news flow but markets have been proved right on this counter so far..maybe that changes.Agree on the simplification of the structure is important and long overdue...evidence shows that is going to take a long time. Moti was not new to the business when he conducted a strategic review he knew it inside and out and must have convinced the board that he had ideas that were in shareholders interests to be given the gig.So it took many months to decide what to do and now over a year to achieve visibly nothing. All the time being an insider and unable to deal...which is utter nonsense.

[resistance1] 01/7/2024 08:27

I’m not expecting a load of change in the bank from the smaller disposals. What the disposals do though is two fold: 1. allow management time to focus on core growth businesses 2. Indicate to the market a more streamlined and less confused business

[echoridge] 01/7/2024 07:43

'.....the share price does not indicate that there will be any positive surprises....' Exactly

[kooba] 01/7/2024 06:47

Echo, there certainly is truth that the non core businesses may struggle to find buyers..i think that was true pre attack ..they are a mish mash of businesses across tricky locations..i never held out much hope of any significant sales to be honest ..i think as with all things BATM ..it just sounded good to try to simplify the structures and refocus the businesses rather than thinking there would be a financial benefit to shareholder value. Problem is that some of those low growth businesses contribute a chunk of revenue and profit i guess but have little value. By clearing them out it exposes quite how small the emerging growth revenues are ..think BATM previously convinced the market of the growth company credentials when much of its earnings were anything but.Anyway may gripe is more on the lack of growth from the remaining businesses..maybe i will be pleasantly surprised as you suggest ..but one needs to look through the smoke and mirrors of what remains a messy structure.the share price does not indicate that there will be any positive surprises.The core growth areas are mostly based and operate outside of Israel adalatis in Italy as is ADOR , with Telco inc Edgility in the USA ..they say they operate in high growth global markets. Celare in cyber has been a beneficiary of the horrible events and increased in cyber attacks on the Israel state...unfortunately that benefit has been very modest compared to the increase in cyber spend and the massive amount of corporate activity in the sector and will still wait for the promised commercial offering.So it's not just the unbundling that has not met expectation it covers a more general failure in the corporate strategy to demonstrate meaningful growth. The company has on every main opportunity downgraded guidance over the past 2 years including the last results ..we are well behind where any estimates were a few years ago and every report has failed to match the consistently declining forecasts..thats poor , and they need to regain shareholder trust that what the guide to is deliverable...as their even near term forecasts have been woeful...i had hoped after successive downward revisions that the better than market expectations would have been hit some time ago...instead just more downward revisions..the last being the full year miss that they didn't even signpost when they must have known.See if we get a post period update..see if they can convince there is any value above the asset value!

[kemche] 01/7/2024 00:25

I have been a consistent buyer since the 60 p days and I am seldom wrong.

[echoridge] 30/6/2024 23:37

I guess my point is that the war is more than 'unhelpful' and less than an excuse. It is both killing demand for Israeli deals and for the company's shares. I mentioned that the former opinion isn't 100% foolproof since BATM does have businesses outside Israel, but the US and Italian franchises are not for sale as far as I know, and the small, admittedly profitable, businesses in Eastern Europe nobody seems to want. That leaves mostly Israeli-centred business - a few that are so non-core they even fall under our radar - where the list of potential buyers is directly impaired by the continuing hostilities. However - again - despite the awful macro events, I personally still think Moti should accept that the situation is unlikely to change materially for some time and start to get more aggressive (ie., take a bigger haircut on his main businesses targeted for sale, and get on with it). As many here have observed, time is not on the Company's - or the shareholders' - side. And finally, there's probably another unfortunate angle to all this and that's the possibility, even if Moti has a couple of likely disposal deals in sight, that he and his team have found it far more difficult to find any reasonable businesses to BUY. Perhaps 18 months to 2 years ago when they set out on this strategy, finding revenue-heavy-but-loss-making sales-driven businesses in the US at a reasonable price seemed a viable strategy, but now, as time has gone on and markets have recovered so dramatically - especially tech names in the US - that thinking has proved naive or BATM was consistently outmaneuvered in the market. Now I agree the market is 'right' for punishing the share price for management's lack of credible progress, REGARDLESS of the reason(s), but I also believe that at least Moti and his board are acutely aware that the blame lies with them and will both update the market appropriately at or around the results and are feeling the heat to get on with the restructuring they promised last summer. On that basis - and my previously stated (relative) comfort that the coming results will not disappoint this time and if anything, have a decent chance of surprising to the upside for once - I'm still a (lonely) buyer of the stock at these levels. No matter management's shortcomings, lingering war, and dire market conditions for Anglo-Israeli smaller caps, this share price is just too cheap.

[kooba] 30/6/2024 14:51

I think the current conflict is not helpful..however much of BATMs operations and markets are outside of Israel that should be a mitigating factor. The problem is the TA 125 the index BATM was in before dropping out after material underperformance is up 5% since Oct 5th 23 whereas BATM are down 38%..that is a further significant underperformance of a relevant index in less than year..extrapolating that further shows the increased underperformance over 5 years..this is not a one off. Whilst I'm sure excuses will be wheeled out as usual I'm afraid the lack of any real progress on strategic objectives is the reason for the underperformance and as echoridge says there needs to be an open dialogue with shareholders on what is going on. Goalposts keep moving forecasts keep dropping and share price is reflecting sentiment on lack of delivering and several years of poor trading below expectations. The whole board needs to get a grip and try to restore some confidence in there being value because the current market cap is discounting further failure.

[echoridge] 30/6/2024 13:52

For whatever its worth, even though I'm as, or more, frustrated by the lack of deal announcements as anyone here, for me this frustrating delay is almost completely down to the continued hot war in Gaza. We can argue about whether a stronger/more experienced CEO could have/should have pushed harder despite this terrible headwind, essentially not letting the decent be the victim of the perfect, and gotten the restructuring of the Company well underway by now, but the bottom-line at this stage, in my view, is that the war has been a far greater obstacle than many of us here are prepared to admit. It has very likely severely dampened interest from foreign buyers for Israel-related deals (even though several businesses that may be for sale are centred outside the country), and that has made it more difficult for Moti to buy something as he has already admitted he's leaning heavily in favour of making sales before he makes a major purchase. The reduced interest in Israeli assets has of course also been manifest in the secondary markets, where the demand for our shares - which was never massive to start with - has definitely been impacted as well and has thus been a real factor in the recent fall. In short, the war and the fear of even greater escalation, has been a massive downer both outside and inside the Company, and all that is, in my mind, by far the most significant reason we're at 16p. As to the only other major possibility for that share price weakness - the forthcoming results - I haven't heard anything fundamentally negative that makes me especially nervous about them. In fact, I'm actually hearing some surprisingly upbeat comments about key businesses like Edgility-Cityfibre, which had been my primary fear among BATM's key activities, so I have downgraded the likelihood of any significant miss in the numbers vs forecast, and now have some real (but still small) hope they may even beat for a change. In addition, despite any cover the war may provide Moti in theory, in practice I'm confident he is feeling the heat for this 18 months with nothing to show for it, and I'm also hopeful that he will address that openly in the coming results and give shareholders some real meat on a deal timeline to chew on.

[wizzkid211] 29/6/2024 19:43

Telco Systems' Award-Winning Edge Computing Solutions Earn Recognition as a Digital Innovator

Telco Systems was selected as a winner for its innovative Edgility platform that delivers future-ready, cost-effective, flexible edge solutions

[kemche] 29/6/2024 12:54

My queries on this issue (admittedly brief, bc my soul is exhausted on all of this stuff. I just want to see the Company close on this Cyber deal, update on the rollout with CityFibre, improve coverage and PR with the Moti era, etc), has returned the following: 1. This award is not out-of-line for an Israeli-NASDAQ CEO; if anything, it may be a bit light relative to 'competitors'; and 2. despite the economic climate, there is still a (very) competitive environment for quality people. I will endeavour to further confirm those sentiments....In the meantime, the share price action remains interesting-constructive vis-a-vis possible index status.

[kooba] 29/6/2024 11:42

The whole days volume was a few hundred quids worth. Totally off the radar ..but why should be people looking , nothing seems to be happening..This company were always announcing anything they saw as positive often not for regulatory reasons ..now there is very little. For a company that talks strategic change and inflection points it's deafeningly quiet.

[kooba] 29/6/2024 11:38

There was an unwind print in 1 share only at 17p...they were no up at all. I have noticed a few days during the week where there was a slightly more positive close on tiny volumes. No reason to get excited I'm afraid.

[bigjon1] 29/6/2024 09:45

Great day on Friday as BATM was up a solid 7%. Hopefully more of this to come. I agree with you Kooba on that sales need to improve. Both Celare and Edgility have so much potential, if a strong sales team were in place revenue figures would explode. Would be good to hear some news on the disposal of non-core business units so that management focus on their attention on businesses such as Edgility and Celare. Either way the future is bright for BATM as long as they take advantage of their opportunities.

[wizzkid211] 26/6/2024 12:28

Revolutionising industries in the Middle East: How edge computing and AI are changing the game - Edge Middle East

Revolutionising industries in the Middle East: How edge computing and AI...
Edge computing and AI are revolutionising industries across the Middle East, driving efficiency, innovation, and...


“#Edge computing, combined with #AI, is a game-changer for industries worldwide” and at BATM we use this revolutionary #tech to help companies reduce latency, optimise #bandwidth, and enhance #privacy and #security.

[kooba] 25/6/2024 09:49

Yep i have said that Celare and Edgility can be complimentary products and the same end markets before , but Celare needs to get that agreed commercial offering together..overdue from earlier commentary. But a combination offering through a sales channel makes sense. But it's that sales channel that is still the issue..they might finally be focusing more on sales but that could take ages and is starting too late. The idea of an acquisition to get the products into tier 1 US companies was raised in the capital markets day over a year ago ..it sounded like there was a deal lined up to me at the time..but nothing , and still being referenced. Unfortunately even though the company has some cash it has ( effectively) worthless paper so how they fund any acquisition to give them that sales presence is a big question.Nothing , so far, has really been delivered since that event last June as we get to the end of another half year , which is disappointing. Sentiment and the share price improved after the event but it seems such optimism was somewhat premature. Let's hope there is not another trading update post period full of jam tomorrow but more disappointments in current trading..which has been the case for a while now.

[resistance1] 25/6/2024 08:54

An additional thought, the vast majority of Edgility competitors in the edge orchestration market segment, are PE backed. A good sign for the future. If you want to invest in edge now, Batm/Telco (Edgility) is one of the very few options not in private hands. Potential edge investors clearly not interested in spreading their investment into medical distribution, medical waste treatment etc!