Seeing Machines making progress

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Seeing Machines produced a positive trading update today and I firmly believe that this company is very undervalued at its current price of 3.25p.

What was lacking was hard detail on contracts won in fleet and more detail on its share of the auto spin-off. Yet, if only half of the fleet trials convert and the auto spin-off goes ahead smoothly it should multi-bag by Christmas.

The company is making great strides, communication as to how well it is doing is increasing and Iā€™m confident that positive news flow will drive the share price forward to reflect the growth in business.

Some of the following update is based on a very recent, exclusive interview with CEO Ken Kroeger. In it he was at pains to stress that heā€™s going to be making a big effort keeping investors informed about developments. For example, Seeing Machines is in the process of revamping its website and he explained: ā€œWhat I am trying to do is create an ongoing, regular conversation with investors through our website. The Seeing Machines website will become the portal for investors and if they want to drill down into the companies they can.ā€

Heā€™s slightly hamstrung by the fact that trials of such an innovative product take time to convert and confidentiality is an issue that often prevents disclosure.

I can see that the company is light years ahead of where it was only 3 years ago. It is now converting its computer vision based IP into commercial product and starting to promote these product brands/companies: CAT, Guardian, Auto, Nucoria etc.

Yet, that is probably of scant consolation for shareholders who have seen the share price sink over the past few months.

From my most recent conversation with him and todayā€™s RNS, Iā€™ve put together the following:

Caterpillar

As the update explains, here Seeing Machines is moving ā€œfrom a low-volume, high-value hardware business to an annuity and licensing-based revenue, high volume, lower unit cost product business model. Aside from the A$21.85m one-off Caterpillar licence fee that will boost revenues for the current financial year, there should also be recurring and growing revenues from product and services. These amounted to US$420,000 from Jan-March 2016 and are expected to grow in the quarter from April-June 2016.

That said, excluding the one-off revenue for this financial year Seeing Machines expects ā€œother sales and service revenue to be lower than the last full year.ā€

Fleet

This product became available to customers in September 2015, without a formal launch and minimal marketing. The salesforce, comprising mining experts, eventually had to be replaced by road transport experts.

Since then, it has formally launched an improved product (with front facing camera) at mining shows: 3 in the US and 2 in Australia under the ā€˜Guardianā€™ brand.

Following the launch of Guardian, it has built up a very solid pipeline of product assessments with potential customers, ā€œover 30 around the worldā€ according to Kroeger.

To give some idea of the volumes he’s talking about he added:Ā ā€œIf we successfully converted all of those assessments weā€™d probably have somewhere around 120,000 – 150,000 vehicles in those fleets.ā€ Moreover, some of them are apparently very big companies.

While he doesn’t expect a 100% conversion rate, he did reveal thatĀ these assessments are going ā€œreally wellā€. In addition, Caterpillar has also made its first fleet sale.

Kroeger also explained: ā€œWe are currently designing the second generation solution, again, with VSI and other external expertise. It will be lower cost and modular in design so that it can be sold as a complete stand-alone solution as it is now or it sold as a companion or add-on to an existing telematics solution by only using some of the module (camera, HMI, image processing and not the geo-positioning or telecommunications elements that could be present in an already-installed telematics service); again being lower cost as result.

ā€œThe logic in this approach is that we are working with large telematics companies to provide them an affordable technology that they can sell to their customers in high-volume at the lowest possible cost while still providing a direct to market, Guardian solution that is affordable to operators that require the complete technology solution due to not having a telematics solution in their vehicles or where the telematics solution is not compatible with ours. The telematics suppliers are seeing a lot of consolidation and are looking for means of differentiation. Our discussion with them are focused on turing them into Ā an additional, high volume, channel to market with their existing customers.ā€

For those seeking names, Kroeger added that he was currently working with 2 global telematics companies (ā€œwith over 1m connected trucks combinedā€) and that, if possible, heā€™d hope to provide more detail in the next Fleet update ā€” which I expect to be in a couple of weeks.

Naturally, investors may be frustrated that he canā€™t put those names out immediately. Still, if he says it is happening you can be certain it is. What he canā€™t control is the marketing sensibilities of huge multinationals that prefer to be named at a time of their choosing.

Thereā€™s also been progress in Auto, Aerospace and Rail but I donā€™t have much to add to the RNS.

Understandably, the lack of detail is a frustration, made harder to bear by the downward moves in the share price. However, Iā€™m very confident that continued patience on the part of investors will be amply rewarded over the next few months.

Of course, there is no substitute for your own research and investors should always take care not to invest more than they can afford to have tied up for a year.

The writer holds stock in Seeing Machines.

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