Blue Prism Share Discussion Threads

[whirlpooljoe] 01/7/2017 09:06

Thanks dannyboy, yes I mentioned the 53 customers buying more. So at one extreme you might have all the new customers joining for free and the 53 existing ones committing to an extra £500k+ which is well over twice the average commit (unlikely). Alternatively, at the other extreme, all the upsells are free of charge and all the new customers made an entry directly at the average spend alongside longstanding and mature customers (also unlikely). So the answer is somewhere in between, of course. Assuming then that the upsells are at twice the commit of new customers (existing customer more confident, more committed, better able to roll out) then you still get new entrants buying at £100k+ which is half the average commitment across the whole base. Not bad in my view.

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 22:07

Whirlpoolpie those numbers include the customers that brought more. HFS, one of the better analyst firms says the services are 3 to 1.

14 RPA vendors listed by HFS, Total market of $115m licenses in 2017, so market share of?

[whirlpooljoe] 30/6/2017 21:21

I registered a brand new account just to comment on the pricing issue. It's bugging me too much!

I doubt ANY company would publish average deal pricing. I don't think this is a fair or realistic request. However, similar calculations from public data allow you to keep watch indirectly.

FY16 - exit run rate £943k per month, 153 customers is roughly £6.2k per customer per month (or around £223k total contractual commitment per customer on average if you assume each customer is on a 36 month term licence).

1H17 - exit run rate £1720k per month, 271 customers ~ £6.3k per customer per month (or £228k average contracted revenue per customer).

So it doesn't look like they're giving it away at this stage otherwise we'd have seen the average figure tumble unless it were perfectly offset by those 53 upsells.

I think all we can really say is that £6k per customer is pretty miserable and so the upsell momentum had better continue in order to retain broad interest and scaled growth.

[janeann] 30/6/2017 19:33

especially when they seem to post either very + or negative comments!

[bamboo2] 30/6/2017 19:27

Funny how often new names pop up on the bb's post results. Says it all really.

[hazl] 30/6/2017 19:22

Bet they're envious of little 'ol PRSM.

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 17:19

Also, Uipath is reportedly eating their lunch on price and success and workfusion disrupting conversations..

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 17:17

BP is a very good marketing machine but they have been in business 12 years now. The last 8 at least selling their RPA products. Before I get in, I want to see the market price erosion issue reported quarterly. Not hard request.

[darola] 30/6/2017 15:14

I think anybody on this thread that thinks this is going to suddenly start surging again will be disappointed.

BP now needs to prove it doesn't just have a successful product, but it also has a profitable and sustainable business model. If the recent update didn't convince the market then only time and patience will make you more money here....

I'm a fan of BP, but will wait for more conventional fundamentals before I'm back in.

[hazl] 30/6/2017 13:57

Wally great post.

[hazl] 30/6/2017 13:56

1579 good post
sogoesit.

I think dannybl brings up a fair point but surely too soon?

I have said it many times but I think we are in more danger with the general market and tech being out of favour at any point....from the share-price point of view.
From a longevity point of view,I think PRSM will continue or be bought out.
Of course this is my opinion only.

[wally19] 30/6/2017 13:17

There is huge amount of chat on this tread extrapolating published BP numbers into growth projections and cost per sale ratios, but BP require strategic foresight to attain 'hockey stick' growth. What excites me concerning the future potential of BP is their forward looking stated strategic decisions reported in their recent results. Namely:

- Strategic Partners to sell and implement into their existing customers bases GLOBALLY. Accenture, IBM, EY, Deloitte, KPMG, Capgemini and Appian, as well as specialist resellers including Symphony and Digital Workforce.
- Ironically this is a people business using skilled professional to implement the technology. Within one year BP have increased their accredited developers 5 FOLD, from 300 to 2000. They have committed to addressing possible skill shortages through training partnerships and autonomous training kits which enable partners and customers to build their own internal training capabilities.
- R&D investment in a Technology Alliance Programme. This initiative seeks to build and assure interoperability between Blue Prism software and other third party products, with the objective of positioning Blue Prism as the DE-FACTO execution engine or "operating system" at the centre of an emerging digital workforce ecosystem. I would assume this is built upon direct knowledge of their clients and business partners requirements.

These three areas are going to be the driving force behind revenue growth through substantial increase in new customers and implementations giving increase in volume of transaction/robots (what pricing model?) that will progressively be undertaken on a global scale!

BP are now becoming the talking point for corporate technology upgrades. This is reflected with with the attendances at their June 2017 inaugural edition of Blue Prism World, annual conference for customers and partners, was sold out, with overflow attendees watching from remote rooms via video link. This year's New York and London conferences were attended by almost 1,200 people. We can naturally assume that this level of attention overwhelmed the anticipated numbers BP had originally planned.

[sogoesit] 30/6/2017 08:46

In my view the opacity is further clouded by the accounting principles employed by this company.
If someone can tell me how, in the accounts, we can discern a real decline in revenue/unit sold given these accounting principles that would be great information.
Await this with interest.

[sogoesit] 30/6/2017 08:33

Competition is an underlying issue and even more in a fast-moving sector like technology. No doubt about that.
However "market prices" between competitors are opaque to outsiders like me and can be confused by other "service" fees.

All a small PI like myself can do is monitor the growth in revenue. When that growth rate starts falling off, and the level it does, will be when we have to re-assess with price/unit decline as a concern. (Is it now? Where are the suggested numbers?).
Look forward to the numbers history that confirms this.
This company is in its infancy. If the argument put forward by dbl is correct and this company will struggle to compete that is a fundamental issue and it tells me I shouldn't be in it.

However, my bet has been placed, I am in it and, til the story as I see it changes, I hold my bet. If it loses it won't be the first or last and if it wins it won't be the first either!

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 08:32

Buffetteer, Your jump to defence and inside knowledge should have you agreeing with me we should be running these calculations on price erosion to prove they don't exist. If it does not exist that's incredible and I only used workfusion as an example because they are in the quadrant for RPA posted here along with a growing list of others. They are all being mentioned alongside BP all the time in the blogs and RPA linked-in groups. Competition is inevitable and not a bad thing. Revenue per license per customer is, if it's declining. Let us start tracking if we don't fear the direction.

[buffetteer] 30/6/2017 08:15

Workfusion is NOT the same product - you're comparing apples with pears. PRSM have not had to drop their prices at all ... yet are growing exponentially. What does that tell you ? The fact is a PRsm bot saves many thousands vs a person . It's safe, secure , easy to implement . Together these are v compelling reasons to buy . Suggestion workfusion is a competitor shows ignorance .

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 08:11

So my question was, should we be tracking revenue by customer and keep an eye on the market price for the average license cost? Will they then have to sell 2x/4x/8x the number of customers in 2018 just to keep same revenue?

[dannyboylife] 30/6/2017 07:51

I don't blame the CEO, I was talking about management, sounds like you know him anyway. What I am saying is the market has already matured when new entrants like workfusion are free and the price of each license went from 10k to a fraction of that from the many other competitors.There are groups for RPA on linked that I have found and started to follow and why I joined this group yesterday.

[ambelmax] 30/6/2017 07:50

however should be whoever

[ambelmax] 30/6/2017 07:49

Everyone seems to be banging on about Bathgate selling 650k shares... and there seemed to be twice that sold yesterday, but no one has mentioned that someone has bought 2 million shares in BP in 2 days... surely however this is has done some homework...NO?

[buffetteer] 30/6/2017 07:34

Dannyboylife
'Management taking off the table.'
Bathgate sold NO shares at the Ipo. He has a £50m holding in PRSM . He is probably not a wealthy guy , having my spent many years developing thisnstsrt up from scratch. I don't deny him the right to take 10% of his holding off the table to enjoy a small part of the fruits of his work . Also it is logical to spread your risk when you have serious assets in one investment . Perfectly fine !

[darola] 30/6/2017 06:35

Blue Prism does not have a monopoly in this market, and dbl has a good point.

In my previous posts I've pointed out that my company is one of the UKs biggest BP users (400+ robots) but our growth in automation is also seeing strong use of Wipros Holmes and IBM Watson. IBM is a big partner of BP and I strongly believe they are using that partnership to get a foothold in the market whilst they mature Watson and influence their customers to adopt it - Watson is proprietary and gives them a barrier to exit.

Good luck with your investments, but take a balanced view.

Edit: Holmes and Watson are free use! We pay for the services we outsource to WIPRO and IBM, they bring the automation to that service. We have a direct relationship with BP and an internal team that develops and manages it. Hence we get more ideas and faster traction with the Outsourced vendors and their own products.

[bamboo2] 29/6/2017 22:52

Draw your own conclusions.

dannyboylife member since.... 29 Jun 2017

[dannyboylife] 29/6/2017 21:18

Management indeed taking off table. The discussion I don't see here is the decreasing total value of each customer. Is this because of the threat from the growing competition I am reading on Linked-in. The coat of the license from competitors is moving to free. Even assuming free is not realistic, the market is going to be paying a fraction of the current costs going forward and management must see this. I want to see real spend and repeat spend per customer. Lots of customers is good but not if each customer is spending less and less.

[dannyboylife] 29/6/2017 21:17

Management indeed taking off table. The discussion I don't see here is the decreasing total value of each customer. Is this because of the threat from the growing competition I am reading on Linked-in. The coat of the license from competitors is moving to free. Even assuming free is not realistic, the market is going to be paying a fraction of the current costs going forward and management must see this. I want to see real spend and repeat spend per customer. Lots of customers is good but not if each customer is spending less and less.