Pci-pal Share Discussion Threads

[simon gordon] 23/7/2024 21:13

ECK also going deeper into payments and offering a website option as well:

23/7/24

Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) the global provider of Customer Engagement Data Security Solutions, has launched a new embeddable payments platform, continuing to help its clients to meet the challenge of taking payments securely in a digital world.

The embeddable payments solution is a crucial part of Eckoh’s Secure Digital Payments solution – allowing end customers who engage with a contact center, the freedom to combine their preferred contact channel with their favorite payment method. They may choose Apple Pay over the phone, Pay by Bank via live chat, card payments over social messaging, or a wide variety of other combinations.

Embeddable Payments takes this one step further, allowing clients to secure digital payments and traditional payment cards via all these channels from within their own website. Moreover, as with the full suite of Eckoh’s products and services, this means the client’s PCI-DSS compliance scope and risk of fraud are minimized by removing sensitive data from their environment.

Eckoh has recently worked with Chumash Casino Resort to implement its embeddable payment page into Chumash’s website and booking tools.

[adamb1978] 23/7/2024 11:00

Something in that ball=park seems sensible Simon. They were 25% up yoy at end of Feb which would put them higher than your figure and also they had other products launching through the year which could have added.

On the negative side, across various enterprise Software categories, there has been some softening this Spring

Their seasonality always leaves some nervousness about whether they'll hit their new TACV figures but is caused by seasonality at the start of the year. Jul and August they sell almost nothing as customers are on holiday and sales people empty their pipeline in the run up to June year end. If you take their year as a 10 month year, then they do something like 4/10 of new ACV in H1 and 6/10 in H2

[simon gordon] 23/7/2024 09:50

Will be interesting to see what the ACV is for 2024. I'm guessing £3m for H2 for a total of £4.6m.

ACV
2024 - £1.6m H1
2023 - £4.27m (H1 £1.5m H2 £2.77m)
2022 - £3.46m (H1 £1.76m H2 £1.7m)
2021 - £3.11m (H1 £1.68m H2 £1.43m)
2020 - £2.62m (H1 £1.17M H2 £1.45m)
2019 - £1.91m
2018 - £0.49m

[adamb1978] 23/7/2024 09:45

Looks like a sensible hire Simon.

TU presumably tomorrow or Thursday on the basis that fewer TUs come out on Fridays and next week would be 'late' July rather than 'mid/late'!

[simon gordon] 22/7/2024 17:12

Brand new position and hire at PCIP - Director of Product Marketing, USA:

Logan McLean

[simon gordon] 20/7/2024 11:20

Hi Adam,

If it breaks to the upside from the consolidation it should go up 10p to 75p, the length of the flagpole.

The chart wants to run higher but needs bullish newsflow.

[adamb1978] 20/7/2024 11:13

Thanks for the charting view SImon. Not something which I'd particularly well versed in.

Pretty certain that we'll get a TU next week. I was told that it would be mid/late July, which points to next week.

[simon gordon] 19/7/2024 17:21

Could get a Trading Update next week.

Chart has spent 15 trading days consolidating in a potential breakout spot above 65p, indicating a flag pattern.

Fingers crossed, an update causes it to trend higher and not fall back below 65p to create a broken flagpole.


free stock charts from uk.advfn.com


Flags are areas of tight consolidation in price action showing a counter-trend move that follows directly after a sharp directional movement in price. The pattern typically consists of between five and twenty price bars. Flag patterns can be either upward trending (bullish flag) or downward trending (bearish flag).

[simon gordon] 15/7/2024 12:27

Afternoon Adam,

I've sent you a DM through ADVFN.

[simon gordon] 12/7/2024 07:59

Chart looks like it's heading to close for the second week above 65p:


free stock charts from uk.advfn.com

[simon gordon] 12/7/2024 07:42

Some interesting insights as to what is cooking in a Zoom contact centre:

Chris Crosby - 11/7/24

Who would’ve ever contemplated this even a few months ago...

Today we’re sharing that InflectionCX, the foremost thought leader in Contact Center and CX outsourcing, has extended our footprint and partnership with Zoom beyond the Contact Center by bringing the Total Experience to every employee in the organization, including our CX agents. Concurrently, we are expanding our Advisory Services to encompass the entire Zoom portfolio.

After piloting Zoom Workspace, it finally feels like we can operate as one company with free flowing communications and knowledge sharing across the organization instead of dealing with fragmented applications that only silo teams and data.

While the ability to replace Slack, Google mail, Calendly and post-it notes with one converged application was compelling, Zoom is a developer platform at the core with the most robust set of APIs across CX, EX and AI powered collaboration in the industry.

With that, we’ve also developed a deep integration with our Velocity AI-PaaS from EndeavorCX, becoming the first and only fully contextually aware platform that facilitates the development and orchestration of AI applications across every aspect of an organization and their Customer Experiences.

Together, Velocity and Zoom function as a Unified Collaboration, CX and data platform to deliver end-to-end AI experiences to customers and employees.

Here’s a few examples of what we’re building and deploying:

Continuous Knowledge Management - From Agent Training and Coaching sessions to Customer Engagements, every interaction within a company contains the potential for valuable knowledge and insights. Using Zoom recordings and transcripts we can continuously feed our Knowledge Lake with the raw material for AI to generate these insights at any scale.

Embeddable AI Applications - Leveraging Zoom Workspace’s embed capabilities, we are creating highly tailored AI powered Agent experiences and Assistants.

An AI Coach for Supervisors - Velocity evaluates every agent interaction, prepares a coaching plan, and then analyzes the coaching session to provide feedback and recommendations for the supervisor.

Contextually Aware Assistants across every employee touchpoint (Team Chat, Email, Meetings)

Client Collaboration and Content Libraries - Zoom Clips and Notes are great products that enable rapid knowledge creation, and when coupled with secure chat channels, we can collaborate with our customers in real-time.

Privacy Aware Compliance Monitoring across all communications, including email and Team Chat.

Company wide AI Summaries and Communications - From creating customized Executive Briefings using information gleaned across the enterprise to automating team communication streams, open access to all of our data will power insights we haven’t even thought of yet.

And I suspect we’re just warming-up.

[simon gordon] 04/7/2024 16:10

Bit more detail on Carahsoft from the Cavendish note on Intercede - 26/6/24:

Intercede has announced a partnership with Carahsoft Technology Group, a leading IT solutions provider to the governments of the US and Canada. Carahsoft both describes itself as, and trademarks the phrase, “Master Government Aggregator”, with over 220 “Contract Vehicles” across the US and Canadian Public Sectors, representing compliant and efficient platforms for government agencies to access goods and services.

Headquartered, as Intercede’s US base, in Reston (Virginia), Carahsoft ranked in the top 25 of the CRN 2023 “Solution Provider 500” list of North American service providers by revenue; and in the top 100 of the Bloomberg Government 200, representing the top federal contractors by value of prime contracts across all US Federal Government Agencies – it is a big beast. Carahsoft (www.carahsoft.com) partners with thousands of vendors, resellers, systems integrators and managed service providers as an extensive channel for a wide range of technology solutions to the North American public sector.

[andre] 03/7/2024 15:25

Does not take much to move the share price up or down here. Good to see it going the right way though. It needs a more thorough re-rating that only further news or results will bring in time.

[simon gordon] 02/7/2024 16:16

Adam,

A while back on the LSE thread either Lucretius or Victor Value posted how much Livingbridge paid for Semafone (Sycruio), I remember the figure as £112m. Semafone did £18.8m in 2021 = 6x. Not forgetting that probably a good chunk of their turnover was On-Prem.

[adamb1978] 02/7/2024 15:50

Where do you get than 6x multiple from Simon?

[simon gordon] 02/7/2024 09:53

Livingbridge buying Sycurio (Semafone) for 6x could be a reason why the PCIP share price rocketed in 2021 and got away a placing at 95p for £5.5m.

[simon gordon] 02/7/2024 09:49

Cyber,

You can get the Cavendish notes if you register on their website.

-

Hastings,

Thanks!

The new analyst at Cavendish has a propensity toward hyperbole:

"William Good informed the Board of his intention to retire in February 2024, and will remain a fervent supporter and shareholder of PCI Pal."

-1/7/24.

-

Adam,

Sycurio did £18.8m to y/e 12/21 = 6x turnover @ £112m.

From post 661 which quotes Lucretius:

"Octopus and BGF, who had invested about £9.6m in Sycurio from 2010 to 2014, trousered about £64m from the sale. And Sycurio’s 5 non-BGF/Octopus directors, which included one of the co-founders, trousered about £15m between them. This included around £3.4m (on shares that cost him less than £10,000) for Gary Barnett, the CEO appointed in February 2019, who, along with his CFO and CRO, took a 7.5% cut of the sales proceeds over £60m. Former directors got around £11m, including nearly £5m for the other co-founder and £4m for the retired CEO. Current and former employees bagged £13m. The biggest winner amongst these was Iain Reagan, Sycurio’s CRO since March 2018, who received nearly £3m.

The incentives on Sycurio’s side to get the deal done were clearly exceptionally strong, matched on Livingbridge’s side by an apparent keenness to justify the toppy price it was paying, including by wasting no time in plunging into patent infringement proceedings against PCIP."

[adamb1978] 02/7/2024 08:42

Edit: the problem with that model, and where you do need to exit in a few years (so not like constellation) is that you need to find another mug who wants to acquire that low quality asset, and which has since become even more dated. It can work well, but you need to buy cheap, run the business aggressively and not hold on too longPersonally, to quote Buffett or Munger, I'd rather buy a great business for an average price than buy an average business for a great price

[adamb1978] 02/7/2024 08:39

Hi SimonLivingbridge in my experience buy lower value, lower quality assets and then try to stack other vaguely related things on top. Stacking EBITDA that way can make the financials look good, but the equity story stops hanging together which impacts multiple.If you look at someone like Constellation Software in Canada, they pursue this model aggressively - buy cheap and stack it high! They're done well, but don't have an exit planned as are an evergreen fund. It's the way they operate - preferred to get an older asset for 2x ARR rather than PCIP for 5x. Adam

[hastings] 02/7/2024 08:33

Happy to ask the question Simon when I speak with them

[cyberbub] 02/7/2024 08:02

Can longer term investors please let me know of some links to other broker reports? I'm trying to work out a reasonable 12-month target price...

[simon gordon] 01/7/2024 22:09

Livingbridge paid £112m for Sycurio. They are on their third CEO since buying it. After 2022 the top management has had little to no experience in the PCI DSS scene. They've just burned £5m in legal fees. They bought the company believing the IP was rock solid.

Why they didn't buy PCIP for 150p in 2021 is a mystery. It would have been a better business decision.

-----

I note the Cavendish analyst mentions PCIP doing M&A in his note this morning.

Whoever speaks with PCIP next, can you ask them if this is going to happen soon or if the analyst is a fantasist?

[adamb1978] 01/7/2024 21:50

They delayed PCIP moving into continental Europe.

I struggle to see that Sycurio are better off for it though given that they've now paid their fees, paid PCIP's fees, lost their EU and UK patents and had their reputation trashed. They're also left with very dated technology.

Them and Livingbridge obviously viewed it as a bet/gamble worth taking at the time that they embarked on this. That probably tells you how weak they think that their competitive position and tech is compared to PCIP.

[andre] 01/7/2024 18:10

Sometimes in business it pays to be pragmatic. I don't like it much but it is the bigger picture unfortunately. Onwards and upwards.

[cyberbub] 01/7/2024 18:04

So is it right that Sycurio tried to derail or delay PCIP with a vexatious/fraudulent suit, and it appears that they have successfully done so, and will suffer no consequences apart from paying their own legal bills?