Indigovision Share Discussion Threads

[jaykaytee] 19/5/2017 11:41

Many thanks SRM for the feedback

[loglorry1] 19/5/2017 09:52

Iain123 www.edesix.com are a small Ed company who actually created and make the body worn cameras. It is Indigo who are the sales partner not the other way around. Edesix seem to be doing pretty well but are not listed.

[iain123] 19/5/2017 09:35

www.heraldscotland.com/business/15295828.IndigoVision_sets_sights_on_US_expansion_as_sales_grow/

Liked this bit:

“Speaking after the meeting, chief executive Marcus Kneen said: “Modest market share in America would be a higher volume than we sell globally, currently.

“Our major competitors will have 60 per cent [of sales] in the US, we have 20 per cent so the opportunity is there, the product is fit for purpose, we have existing reference sites and installation partners; we just had to professionalise our approach to sales... in the US.”

[iain123] 19/5/2017 08:10

Thanks SRSM.

One question I would have had is on the Body worn stuff and how its selling. I believe the biggest seller of these in the UK is www.edesix.com . They appear to share the same manufacture as IND – they look identical and I’m always mistaking their kit for INDs. You have to wonder how they can sell so many but IND don’t appear to (or at least don’t advertise that they do)?

[srsm] 18/5/2017 17:05

Thanks Futureshock3000. I'd concur with sales through resellers although from past conversations and today it seems end customers do come to IND direct but presumably get passed on to the appropriate reseller.

Meeting Report.

Turned up at the wrong venue. Was Bush House, now Pentlands Science Park - Mordun building. About 500 metres away. And conscientious IND had made a map for folks like me at Bush House. Turned out I think I was the only shareholder.

So big drop from dozen to 20 which was typical for many years. A sure sign to "buy when the market has lost interest" ??? There were quite a number of folks though. Auditors, a journalist (Herald probably) and some tech staff - they always like to have some staff at the AGM.

Usual business. Resolutions passed. Near 100% agreement from proxies. Nice round of applause from attendees for Hamish.

Presentations from Marcus, Alex Swanson - Head of Engineering, and Chris Lea (new CFO).

Confirmation of main markets as Cities, Airports, Banks, Police and Casinos. No change really.

Move to Chinese cameras complete. Turns out every other competitor is doing the same. In the past a product would sit in the cataloque for 4 to 5 years, now new stuff turns up every year. So less cash to spend developing a product that will need to be replaced very soon. Not sure what these new features might be. But IND has made the right move in good time.

Priorities are Software, USA, Sales Teams and Partner Support. Sensible stuff as hardware has been commoditised.

Software - Lite, Pro and Ultra approach. Same for other tech. Helping to get away from IND being mainly low volume, flagship solutions.
Cybervigilant seems a great idea. Patented. Very novel I think. Marcus indicated that the Trump inauguration cameras (not IND) were hacked. Widely reported. Competitors playing catch up. But many are faking it.
hxxp://www.technewsworld.com/story/84267.html

Regarding USA and Sales Teams. They now have Sales coverage in every state. Whereas before there were gaps. Presumably that means at least 1 reseller reporting to a State level IND Sales guy???? And there are 3 zones. West. North East and South East. FutureShock - I scribbled down first names - respectively - Jeff, Rick and Gary. Jeff is a long termer and I think the others are top recruits from competitors - one from Avigilon I think. Is that the names you were expecting from your analysis?
Admission that they maybe didn't get the best people in the past. Hence endless re-organisations. Time will tell.
At ISCWest IND indicated that they had 200+ at their stand 2 years ago. But with Cybervigilant and aided perhaps by bold new design for exhibition stands they had 900+ visitors. Has to be positive.

Partner Support. Nothing to add other than a statement from Marcus that "our customers love us" but that they need to get their story out better. Amen.

I like Techie stuff. So asked about Body Worn Cameras. Nothing massive but it is good at getting people in the door. Often other security tech is sold to folks initially enquiring about the Body Worn.

They are still the only company with the Distributed Architecture. So, much more tolerant of failure than EVERY other CCTV system installed anywhere. I again expressed my frustration that they are the company with the best end to end architectural solution (undoubtedly); amongst the best cameras (evidence the video comparison of the best of their competitors - although these days everyone just sells Chinese cameras); and amongst the best at everything else. Yet remain a minnow. Don't understand it.

Avigilon $660M vs IND £14M market cap. And probably IND would win any tech competition... that's a guess. And I'm biased.


A few Case Studies. I asked about the great stories Oliver (founder) used to tell of how a Casino (typically) would reject IND to buy a competitor solution on price - it would fail and then they'd come back to IND. I suggested that these are the best stories to help sell a product. These still happen. E.g. Airport with IND in one area but went cheap in the other and had to give up when integration failed so came back to IND.
And an airport terror incident where competitor system tried to find evidence - it took a day then the IND solution was searched and the evidence was found in minutes. Seems odd that two systems are used in the same area... maybe a legacy system. Perhaps hard to share these stories publicly as it would embarrass customers. I'm being vague for that reason.

A good solid LTBH I think. And maybe one day...

[futureshock3000] 18/5/2017 14:46

@srsm - IndigoVision sell mostly through 'authorised resellers' companies that 'glue together' the bits of a security project - cameras, card access,software etc. The trouble is that they have traditional had a very limited system integrator base compared with their major competitors (IV claim to have 800 authorised resellers, iirc Axis have around 20,000, Avigilon have around 5,000).

Looking at the evidence of IV's sales team, it appears to be chaotic, especially in North America. If you go through the IV news on their website and then cross reference the name on LinkedIn, you can see that quite a lot of sales hires in the past 2 years (in fact past 9 months in some cases) have gone. This is worrying as IV's news seems to portray each new sales hire as "the next big thing" and then... nothing. E.g. East US Sales Director hired last January (ex Avigilon). Looks like he's been replaced already. Canadian Senior Sales director hired last summer. Gone. Numerous sales account managers in the US join and then disappear (some don't even list their time at IV because it was so short.

Maybe IV are tougher on the sales team hitting their targets than the Chairman is on the CEO hitting his targets (has the CEO ever hit a revenue or profit target since taking over from the founder, Oliver Vellacott?) "Management action has been taken to improve sales performance" seems to be a common update to investors. Maybe the new Chairman will take 'management action' on the executive team?

The new Cybervigilant product sounds interesting, but how many times have we seen this from IV? Super resolution cameras (20 megapixel camera?), body cameras, low cost hardware, entry level software. These are all new products that IV has launched over the past 5 years that haven't delivered results, instead we're promised some 'new widget' that will change the sales line. Like their sales hires, IV seem to have a history of churning out products and failing to turn potential into revenue.

Also nobody mentioned the chairman, Hamish Grossart, retiring in September? Time for a complete change across the board and executive team? IV seems to desperately need a younger, fresher approach. Being run like a pension fund isn't a good business plan for a tech company, IMHO. Especially when the competition are lightyears ahead in value and investor return (Axis purchased for near $3bn, Avigilon started in 2005(?) and now has market cap of $660m). IndigoVision's market cap or prospect of being bought out at a good price? Best not to get too depressed.

Will be interesting to hear reports from AGM, especially what the actual plan is to deliver sales and more importantly profit (no mention of that in the update). The worrying part of the 18th May update is that judging from the previous annual results, IV need to have significant volume growth in order to deliver revenue growth, due to unit prices being lowered. So 28% increase in camera and 10% increase in software sales actually resulted with 'modest growth in overall revenue'(to quote the update). We must be looking at 40-50% volume growth in order to deliver double digit revenue growth? So what's the plan from the AGM to deliver that revenue growth?

Jam tomorrow?

[iain123] 18/5/2017 09:27

Please report back SRSM - I'm skipping it this year as it was starting to sound repetitive.

[srsm] 18/5/2017 09:10

Like Cybervigilant. Great idea and perfect timing with the non-stop hackathon that is newsworthy nearly every week.

hxxps://www.indigovision.com/en-us/ slick new US style video. And the animation playing on the real fear of being hacked or not knowing you've been hacked. Some imaginative stuff. Needs more whitespace in the design though.

I wonder how many "sales re-organisations" there have been. Particularly in the US. Backs up my theory that sales people are completely random, they get lucky selling something or they don't. There appears to be no way of knowing if they are going to be good at it or not.

And I still don't know who the sales folk sell to. Do they go sell to the Casino operator or do they sell to the reseller/installer/security consultants who then sell IND to the Casino????

Going to the AGM.

[varies] 18/5/2017 09:03

I am intrigued by the reference to CyberVigilant.
Does this mean that we are moving into a new line of business currently in high demand ?
It is also interesting to learn that IND has been recruiting sales managers in USA from its competitors.
Some consolidation in this industry might be timely. I also hold shares in Synectics, which has proved just as disappointing over the last few years. Whether an amalgamation of the two companies might make sense I rather doubt.

[topvest] 18/5/2017 08:24

Shares strongly up which is nice to see. I found the trading update not as clear as it could be.

[iain123] 18/5/2017 08:22

The update falls short of actually saying what the US performance actually is. If only they got a $ for every time they talked about breaking into the USA market.....

[topvest] 18/5/2017 07:56

Yes, fairly positive I would say. Margin pressure is the issue though.

[oilretire] 18/5/2017 07:34

Very up beat comments compared to recent statements....



.....IndigoVision is pleased to report that, in the four months to April 2017, software licence and camera volumes have again shown strong year on year growth, of 28% and 10% respectively..........

........The immediate outlook is more positive than it has been for some time, and the medium term prospects are promising. The Board continues to expect that 2017 as a whole will see improvements over last year, with both sales and profits, as in recent years, second-half weighted, and the latter part of the year also benefitting from higher revenues in North America.

[balcony] 18/5/2017 07:34

think we will see £2 plus today

[varies] 27/4/2017 13:11

Market cap is roughly equivalent to net current assets. R&D expenditure set against profits was about $3.5 million in 2016.
If this money is being well spent, we may hope for better profits in 2017 & 2018.
This has been a disappointing share for many years but I do remember making a lot of money here long ago and hope that good times will come again.

[iain123] 21/4/2017 08:51

Couple of new casino contracts:

hxxp://www.reliablesecurity.com/new-spokane-tribal-casino/

and this rather nice 2100 camera one:

hxxp://www.reliablesecurity.com/resorts-world-new-york-system-replacement/

[iain123] 20/3/2017 08:32

Trouble is they've been a bid target for some time and nowt has occurred.

[topvest] 18/3/2017 21:31

Yes, looking a bit more positive. Looking at the Annual Report they must have been joking by presenting the whole of the 2016 bad debt charge as exceptional - 0.3m given the overall bad debt charge of 0.4m was below last year's 0.5m. Presumably, to meet market expectations. They also ignored the exchange gain. KPMG shouldn't have let them get away with this. Last year's results were break-even.

Anyway, prospects look a little better for 2017. Definitely some value here at below book value. Could be a bid target.

[iain123] 02/3/2017 08:30

Meh... Sales booming but its hard to make money selling penny chews.

[jaykaytee] 11/1/2017 15:31

Blimey ..a bit of action !

[dangersimpson2] 11/1/2017 13:28

Little bit of life here for a change, although on low volume - tipped somewhere maybe?

Return to profitability while trading below NCAV must put this on the radar of some deep value investors.

[iain123] 05/1/2017 14:28

Another US casino:

hxxp://www.reliablesecurity.com/montreign-resort-casino/

[iain123] 20/12/2016 15:52

New casino:

hxxp://www.reliablesecurity.com/the-fitz-casino-hotel-tunica-announcement/

[iain123] 07/12/2016 15:16

Potentially 45++ GTR station ticket gates but it’s not clear from the article.

hxxp://www.taylortechnologysystems.com/gtr-railway-station/