Hey Jocko hope you are well mate.I have not been following WRK...

Hey Jocko hope you are well mate.

I have not been following WRK in great detail lately (distracted by farming), although the share price has improved.

We need to assess the business by its performance rather than its opportunities (yes, I know investment is about opportunities).

First up is tech - tech (like transmit security and other NPP stuff) is pretty much valueless without an attached value proposition (the thing that takes tech and makes it valuable to someone) and making tech changes valuable is something of a commercial art. Does WRK make their tech valuable? That's a question for each investor.

Financial performance - the latest numbers (Q3) are a mixed bag. Their burn rate is not pretty, and key investments (operating costs) seem to be significantly tilted toward staff costs, with very little being spent on marketing and the pot is getting small (runway). The question really is - will the market continue to invest in the business to prop it up (given the worldwide economic environment) or will WRK need to start to make some hard calls on people and investments?

Sales (very much a different conversation to Finances) - there seems to be a real focus on key players (large deals), which is a fine strategy as long as the business can deliver. The devil is in the details for these deals - are the "all-you-can-eat" deals (i.e. once signed, the revenue for WRK is capped), or are they based on usage (commercial in confidence, I am guessing)? As an investor, I would ask, "What is the concurrent deal strategy, and what are the key cohorts based on deal size?"

One of the things that would concern me as an investor is the whole deal with LINK, the structure on the long-term revenues, the reliance on these revenues to prop up the business, the impact of the LINK acquisition and having to spin up compliance tech for non-AU regions - I don't know the details of the deal or the deliverables so it's hard to make a call on whether this is a great or a not-so-great strategy.

In general, they seem to be improving the annual sales and delivering on what they have made public.

This is a good business, and it has some really smart guys & gals in it. The question for me is whether the market opportunity is actually there or whether the market is moving in a completely different direction than WRK.

Hope that adds some colour to the conversation.

Rich