Stilo Share Discussion Threads

[infocusint] 05/12/2017 12:47

Varies
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[infocusint] 05/12/2017 12:47

Varies
Try fat

[varies] 05/12/2017 11:01

StiloLosses
Thank you for taking the trouble to remind us of the painfully slow development of AuthorBridge and Stilo's other shortcomings.
I fear that you are probably right in suggesting that we have nothing much to hope for before 2019, if then.
I have misguidedly increased my stake here during the last 6 months at about 5.5p but this is still a minor holding for me.
With a 10% dealing spread there seems little point in selling and hoping to repurchase at a lower price. So I shall hold on.
I hold shares in quite a number of companies of this size and I find that from time to time an interesting development occurs and the share doubles or more in a couple of days. This is often a good time to bail out.
We may one day strike lucky with Stilo and we may not.

[escapetohome] 05/12/2017 00:31

Can stilo issue a cryptocurrency?

Come on stilo jump on the bandwagon, and shift a gear!

[stilolosses] 05/12/2017 00:06

Up to now I have been very optimistic about Stilo and long term my stance is exactly that but in the short term I have come to the opinion that Stilo will have to move 2 steps back before it can move forward. Unfortunately, the same old story that Stilo investors have experienced for decades. Why? Simple! AuthorBrdige!

I more or less expect revenues for the 12 month end for 2017 to be flat to say the least with the very strong possibility that profits will come in lower for the full 12 months. Stilo's 2016 numbers really did surprise me for the better but as we all know they were able to report very good numbers for 2016 because of the effect of Brexit as they collect the majority of revenues in dollars. Even if Stilo do report an increase in revenues I expect these to be very, very slim around the 5 to 10% mark with overall profits being down.


One has to be very realistic about the speed with which Stilo can move forward in relation to additional revenues and profits with or without AuthorBridge. I think every single investor was by now expecting to have seen AuthorBridge bringing those all important sought after revenues after being in development since 2014, but 3 years on and it still is not ready and AuthorBridge has only been allocated in real terms to 2 customers: IBM and Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington D.C. Now we are approaching 2018.

The AuthorBridge product, as I have said a before, is something that Stilo has been putting together since 2014 and from their own statements to the market they have repeatedly failed to get it up and running 3 years on. Lets not forget that they have also had the whole of 2017 to get things right.

This is what Stilo management said about AuthorBridge at the end of year results 2016:

Development of AuthorBridge is progressing well, albeit with some slippage against original schedules. Its initial adoption by the central Information Developer Tools team at IBM in the USA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington D.C. provides a good foundation upon which we can build future sales.


This is what Stilo management said about AuthorBridge at the end of year results 2015:

"We now look forward to the general release of AuthorBridge during 2016".


This is what Stilo managment said about AuthorBridge at the end of year results 2014:

We are currently engaged in a pilot project with a very prestigious customer, with the initial release of AuthorBridge planned for later in 2015.

The annoying thing for myself and all investors is the protracted wait to see lift off in terms of revenues and profits. Something that everybody have been waiting for for decades and each year we have hope but then we find the company takes 2 steps back before moving forward.

I am more or less certain that the 2017 year end results are going to be flat. Not a disaster but flat to say the least with overall profits most likely to be down. Lets not forget for the first 12 months overall revenues were only up by around 4% and during the last 6 months a hard Brexit has not materialised and the pound has got stronger against the dollar! The dollar helped us in 2016 but I do not think it will help us in 2017. As shown in the first 6 month results.

Going forward into 2018 if they still do not get AuthorBridge ready and with a hard Brexit looking highly unlikely I just cannot see where that additional long sought after revenue is going to come. Even if Stilo manage to get AuthorBrdge up and running in 2018 customers are not simply going to buy a product out of a box, use it and make payment for it there and then. Once AuthorBridge is fully ready, Stilo will have to market it more aggressively, not that they don't anyway, but then those potential customers will have to get their own systems to speak the same language and implement the AuthorBridge functions. As we have seen with IBM and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington DC, it takes customers many, many, many months to do this.

Another reason, if we needed it, the market size in which Stilo operates. It operates in an incredibly small, minute market which has been growing at an incredibly slow rate for the last 20 years. Let's not forget that in the market that Stilo operates Stilo is the leader in its own right but still their overall revenues are under £2 million and have been for the last 20 years or so.

At one stage up to around 5 years ago Stilo use to coin the phrase: "The global market for dynamically publishing digital content to desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices is expanding rapidly".............but as the years have gone on they have ditched this type of terminology as they have come to realise that though the market is making progress the speed of this progress is very, very, very, very slow.

In closing, as we will all see, it is not going to take months to get those all important revenues revving but it will take a long, long, time. Years and not months with or without AuthorBrdige!

Anybody thinking that this is going to happen in just a few months even when they do get AuthorBridge ready will be very, very disappointed. It will continue to be 2 steps backwards before moving forward. A slow, steady, incremental pace that have been evident for a number of years.

Lets not forget, Stilo have never in their history ever been able to launch a single product in the last 20 years that have brought in significant revenues, Not Omnimark; not Migrate; not JetView and nothing in the Saps market before.

AuthorBridge too will be the same. AuthorBridge when it is eventually ready, hopefully in 2018, will bring in small but all important long well overdue incremental revenue growth and profit in the years ahead. Nothing spectacular but important additional revenue that investors has been seeking for many years. When it is ready, marketed and when companies start to take it on, each company will go through a long and protracted process before they are able to say for sure that it will do the job for them. They won't simply be able to get it out of the box, start using it and thats it. The very nature of the software, its complexities and the customers themselves make for a long road ahead.

Progress has been happening at Stilo for a long time but the speed of this progress, like always, is going to be slow, painful and tremendously protracted and long as we have seen for many years. Good and stable but slow and painful.

Patience is the name of the game. It will come but very, very slowly!

Years not months!

[varies] 27/11/2017 11:12

mudbath
Many thanks for your explanation

[mudbath] 27/11/2017 09:36

From the link provided by russ5o5

"Vega ARM allows you to use the collaborative editor of your choice such as Authorbridge, Quark, Stilo and other tools that facilitate the creation and editing of DITA content."

Vega,

Partner IBM

(With Vega Author Review and Management (ARM) you can rapidly create
and update documents, while accessing multiple repositories via a single
unified interface. It provides secure workspaces that allow users to collaboratively
access, review, create and share content all in one place.)

Their only connection,that I can see,with Stilo, is that of operating in the same information migration space.

[varies] 27/11/2017 09:09

mudbath
Is Vega Unity a subsidiary of Stilo ?
If not, would you please explain the connection.

[russ505] 27/11/2017 08:44

Cheers mudbath another very interesting link.

[escapetohome] 26/11/2017 22:44

Interesting!that might help to reverse the share price decline somewhat!

[mudbath] 26/11/2017 20:43

Hello russ505.
I am so pleased that at least one poster continues to carry a torch for Stilo !
Well done on providing the above link.

Coincidentally,I was just commenting a couple of days ago that,despite the low share price,AuthorBridge was in fact nearing adoption point.

The next 6 months might well therefore prove to be a pivotal time in the company's progress towards achieving fuller commercialisation and scale.

Interestingly this could be the(your) link to Stilo gaining the US Nuclear contract.

[russ505] 26/11/2017 19:12

Found this...hxxps://www.vegaecm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Vega-ARM-Technical-Rev-1.pdf
Optional Editors
Vega ARM allows you to use
the collaborative editor of your
choice such as Authorbridge,
Quark, Stilo and other tools
that facilitate the creation and
editing of DITA content

[stilolosses] 04/10/2017 10:09

Well done for that!! Well spotted!!! I take my hat off to you!!........But I think you're at it yet again!!!!

I think you're doing what you normally do!! You're again giving misleading information.

These kind of job descriptions have been part of Stilo's recruitment for years. With Migrate Dita before, which has been about for 10 years now, job descriptions were similar and had a requirement to scale a deployment for a large number of users. Stilo always hoped to scale "on a large scale with customers" with their Migrate Dita service but to date they have never been able to do so, hence the development of other tools that they now want to bring out. Lets not for get this is still a small market that will continue to grow on a small scale. It will definitely grow but very slowly as Stilo has been able to demonstrate for the last 20 years or so.

That really is an absolute, incredible and fantastic good find within these jobs and really does break the job specifics down in some detail.

I have actually been looking at Stilo's website quite regularly and to my knowledge the 2 jobs currently being advertised have been there since February 2017! It would appear that is taking Stilo quite some time to get the right staff to take up these positions.

In terms of Omnimark maintenance revenues it has taken nearly a couple of decades to reach these levels. 20 years to get Omnimark revenues to the current levels of around £900,000.

In terms of Migrate revenues these are only around the few hundred thousand mark and they too have taken some 10 years to reach these levels after a tremendous amount on hard work and effort from management. Bearing in mind that Migrate is their star product. Their baby!!

Let's not forget that Migrate revenues have only reached these levels after years and years of "incremental enhancements". These enhancements, as we all know, have taken and will continue to take years rather than months. Like Stilo management has said many, many times before "incremental development of AuthorBridge and Migrate". As we all.... "incremental development takes years and not weeks or months"

I think the question that is on everybody's mind is "when will Author Bridge start to contribute to the bottom line?"

They have stated in their annual reports that they started developing it in 2014 with IBM.

2 years later in 2016 it was put onto IBMs systems and was also put into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

A further year later Author Bridge was available as a trial version around March 2017. So, since developing Author Bridge since 2014 by March 2017 they have only managed to get it onto 2 clients books in a very small way. This clearly demonstrates the incredibly difficult, time consuming and very, very slow processes involved in software of this nature. These kind of tools take several years to develop, improve, master, promote, market and then to get some bucks for.

Stilo have also said that they still need to do even more work to get it ready which clearly is taking a lot, lot longer than what Stilo management was hoping. I think everybody was expecting to see Stilo complete all this work by now and have Author Bridge up and running but they haven't. When the work will be completed and signed off for the next stage we can only guess. Not forgetting, again, that they have been developing Author Bridge since 2014 and if it still is not ready by the end of this year then it would actually mean they have been developing Author Bridge since 2014......3 long, time consuming,, slow years.

Those 2 jobs have been advertised on the Stilo website for over 8 months now.

They too have said that the Migrate Jats service is going to be "incremental" just like Migrate Dita. Migrate Dita, with where it is now, has taken around 10 years to get here.

Over the years they have added things like XML/SGML/HTML, FrameMaker, Word, AuthorIT, InDesign, RoboHelp and DocBook to Migrate. These additions have taken years and years and years of hard work and this has been a very, very, very, very slow process. Again, when Stilo management refer to "incremental enhancements"...this is exactly and precisely what they are referring to. This is what they mean by "incremental enhancements !!!!!!!"

I really do think that it is still going to take a considerable amount of time before we see a meaningful difference to the bottom line. I am not being negative here.......simply realistic!!!!

I am in this for the very long term and with no further announcements expected until their year end in March 2018; difficulties filling those jobs; huge delays with Author Bridge with it still not being ready; incremental changes to the new Jats service for which customers will come on slowly, I believe time is the most important factor. Time is what we all have to factor in and factor in in "spade fulls!!!!"

Deliver they will but it is taking a tremendous amount of time.

Let's not forget it has now been nearly 4 years since work on Author Bridge began and they have stated that it still needs a lot more work to be done. After the work is done and during this time management still need to continue marketing it.

The long haul is in the making unless Stilo can make some major and immediate progress but as we all know these complicated and intricate software products take masses of time like Omnimark and Migrate Dita before. They take years and not months. Already they have been working on Author Bridge since 2014, only have 2 small agreements with 2 companies, whilst recently stating that they still need to do more work to it as it still is not ready. So, already 4 years have gone by and no meaningful revenues have been generated.

This share really is for the long term investor and there are many of these within these boards who have been waiting for decades. Quite a lot of very long term investors here who have been waiting anything up to 15 to 20 years to date. That is some waiting!!!!!!!

In closing, we all know Stilo will get it right at some stage. Like everyone who has been a long standing investor knows only too well its a question of when they will get it right. Its about the timing. No doubt the wait will continue. How long that wait will be is the million dollar question. Investors have been waiting up to 15 to 20 years and they are still waiting!!!

The waiting continues!!!!!!!!

Will it be 2018?

Will it be 2019?

Or, will it be 2020?
....................................Or, will it be longer!!!!!!

[mudbath] 04/10/2017 09:23

One of two jobs currently being advertised by Stilo,that of Full-stack Developer,has an interesting range of parameters,imo.

"Responsibilities
 Integrate AuthorBridge with a variety of 3rd party repositories
(VCS and CCMS, proprietary and open source).
 Design and implement backend functionality as needed. For example,
- user accounts with permissions and roles,
- licensing,
- collaboration features.
 Scale a deployment for a large number of users.
 Support cloud-based and onsite implementations.
 Implement client-side functionality of AuthorBridge in java script, with the focus being more on the algorithmic aspects than on presentational ones."

Way to go !

[stilolosses] 01/10/2017 10:10

A "Investors being overly bullish"............Totally agree there! Over the years there have certainly been certain posters who year in, year out have continued to generate completely unacceptable and ill-founded and completely false and untrue expectations about the imminent and short-term success of the company which to date have never materialised. Posters falsely making claims that something is about to happen year in, year out. That certainly has not helped. Totally agree that this has kept some investors away but whether those investors who were going to invest large stakes is questionable. Those who want to invest large stakes normally do a lot of due diligence and do not invest lightly. Apart from a couple of large holders Stilo don't have any other large investors. I don't think it's a great deal to do with what people say on the boards but its with how those investors do their due diligence, and, of course, when they look at the current, previous and forward thinking of a company, they think to themselves about how much money they can make from their investment and how quickly. If they believe that they can buy a large stake and then offload it quickly and make a quick buck, then they often go with that. But if they see that this is not possible then they clearly stay away as has been the case with Stilo over the years. I certainly don't see that changing any time soon. I certainly do not see any large investor coming to but Stilo any time soon.

B "Company plods on"............Well that is certainly what Stilo has clearly demonstrated over the last 15 or 20 years. It has certainly plodded on! In certain ways I think this has not been as bad as it sounds. Stilo has got to where it is now after a tremendous amount of hard work and effort over the years. Financially, they are absolutely fine. Course, they could have been where they are now in terms of revenues and profits and world leading products with a lot of debt but there not. They have no debt. The only thing I think that has been out of their control is the size of the market that they operate in. It's a very, very, very, very niche market and this has clearly shown in terms of revenues and profits over the years. As most of us know their products are world leaders but to date they are still knocking on the doors in order to increase revenues and profits to the next level. Admittedly, they have been doing this for years. I think this will happen and its just matter of when it will happen with their new products.

C "Publicity shy company, relatively unknown"................ I am going to totally disagree there. If you look in detail at their website you will see all the world's leading events that they attend throughout their sector, throughout the year. Year in, year out! You will see that not only do they attend all of these events and put themselves directly in front of a huge, massive amount of their potential customers, but they are nearly always one of the premier sponsors sponsoring these events alongside other sponsors. In terms of publicity, they need to go directly in front of their customers and they have been doing exactly that for years. They are always at the most important, significant world leading Dita events around the world. These events are the most prestigious events and as well as attending these and being one of the premier sponsors, I don't think they can do any other cost effective publicity. They have been doing the right publicity directly to their potential customers for years now. The only problem they have is that they are in a complete niche market. The other major factor that does not help them is the fact that they are operating in an incredibly, small, minute market which only grows very, very slowly.

D "Investors dont really understand product , what it does or market".................You are absolutely right there. Stilo operates in not only a niche market but in a market that is difficult for the mainstream investors to get their heads around.

E) wrong strategy re dividend"................If you look at Stilo's annual reports you will see that around 2011 or 2012 they said that they wanted to create long term shareholder value. For such a small company with revenues of around £1.5 to £2 million there was only a limited amount of ways in which they could do this. They would have sat down and thought about this in a very detailed way, bearing in mind that they probably wanted to remain debt free, keep investors on board whilst knowing that their revenues were going to remain around these levels. In the overall scheme of things they decided to pay dividends. I think this decision has served them well as they have managed to get the share price up from the lows of 1 pence to the current 4 and 5 pence level whilst growing their cash and product offerings.

Paying even a small amount of dividend I feel is a way of keeping investors on board. Obviously, the company has no other tangible and viable option available to them. They have continued to invest very heavily in new products, continued to build their cash pile whilst marketing themselves, I feel, aggressively at all world leading Dita events. Not a lot more they can do really. Ultimately, lets not forget they are in a small niche market. What they have not done and should not do is just advertise and promote themselves just for the sake of it as we all know those marketing companies who will take millions off you and deliver nothing. Stilo have been very astute in marketing in only the areas that matter to them: Dita market specific world leading trade shows.

Going forward, with their new products Jats and AuthorBridge, on top of Omnimark and Migrate, this will now open new doors for them. Admittedly, it has taken decades to get Omnimark and Migrate to where they are at the moment and only time will tell how quickly they will be able to generate that extra needed revenue. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

In closing, one thing that I think helps all investors is that we no longer get posters making ill-founded, incorrect, misleading and false statements about Stilo's position.

We no longer have posters creating what we all now know to be "FAKE NEWS!!!!!"

[escapetohome] 30/9/2017 20:56

Why is the share price at current levels?

A) BB Investors posts generally overly bullish and rose tinted - when potential investors casing the company see the idealistic dreams are not realised year after year , they are put off taking large stakes.ie over promising effect ceated vs under delivering!

B) company plods along

C) publicity shy company, relatively unknown

D) investors dont really understand product , what it does or market.

E) wrong strategy re dividend , investors dont expect a dividend from a growth company , and would rather it be retained in the company for such a small amount. It would be laughable if the company undertook a rights issue.

[stilolosses] 30/9/2017 08:27

Well...........I totally agree there! Naturally, I along with everybody else, was expecting the share price by now to be much higher.

No good hiding from the fact that the share price is performing badly. I think about 18 months 2 years ago there was general consensus on this board that at the very, very minimum we were expecting the share price to hit at least 12 pence for starters.

I can't hide the fact that I am disappointed that 2 years on this still has not happened but I have to say that it does not really affect me as I am in this for the very, very, very long term.

Anyway, why do you think yourself that the share price is at its current levels?

We all know it came down from its peak of around £1.30 some 15/20 years ago. As we all know it went down to the 1 pence mark around 6/7 years ago and about 12 months ago went up to the 7 pence mark before dropping back down to its current levels.

I do think though that the only ones who need to worry are those who are in it for the short term and all those long term holders should simply sit back and enjoy the dividends.

[escapetohome] 29/9/2017 16:31

An unacceptable share price performance!

[gwr7] 23/9/2017 09:26

What went wrong with you michael? I used to think you were a reasonable and informative person yet you keep getting involved in tedious slanging matches and attempts to trash other people's threads in the style of a particularly nasty and bad mannered gutter snipe. It's said a man's soul is exposed by his writing and you certainly weren't able to hide the nasty side of your character for long. I thought at one time you might be able to write about your favourite companies in a respected periodical in the manner of John Lee, but there's no chance of that now and 129 followers on your twitter account is a rather sad reflection on you given the effort you used to put into your blog. It was once informative but is now a vehicle for your bitter rants. You have no class and your twisted thinking has infected your investment choices. Given the number of people you've picked fights with I'd be surprised if you ever came out from hiding behind your user name.

[lukead] 13/9/2017 15:08

Mouse, rejoice, it's up

[lukead] 01/9/2017 14:22

Where is the MOUSE these days, oh I know , he is keeping watch on the OPTI BB, so he can write some more rubbish.

[slartybartfaster] 24/8/2017 14:33

Don't let the tw troll diss you fella. Michaelmouses talks about experience or lack of. Laughable when you know his history from investing in frauds and so called growth companies that have to restate profit downwards, cooking books, he love em. Don't take my word for it. Michaelmouse invested in Avanti comms, it ceo committed fraud and boasted about it. INTQ committed fraud and his stupendous growth play TRAK had to restate its accounts after it was caught out with creative accounting practises. Now check the graphs of all of them.

[mudbath] 23/8/2017 15:11

According to my records,the STL Directors have been both modest and occasional where share options are concerned,with the last grant being way back in October 2015,at an exercise price within spitting distance of both the current and then share price.
The conclusions which we draw in respect of this and any other company are both subjective and objective.I seek to benefit not only from my own research but also that of others,whose judgement I respect.It would not be within my remit though to instruct others as to how they should proceed.

I look forward to standing under one end of the Stilo rainbow if and when the sun comes out.(as I remain confident that it will)

Good luck at York firth.

[clocktower] 23/8/2017 13:01

In your case,I do not firth but it is best to DYOR research and not base investments/gambles on others recommendations in general, as I expect you will agree.

For myself, I do not see such a rosy picture, as the directors have repeatedly rewarded themselves with stock while taking moderate salaries - this being a very tax efficient method of reaping longterm rich rewards that they can take when ready, which might be anytime of their choice, which could mean years away, and little true growth in the share price during that time, using the dividend to their own best effect imo.