Ann: Quarterly Activities/Appendix 4C Cash Flow Report, page-13

Agree. These are a confusing set of numbers - not because of anything the company has done, just because the numbers in each Q are distorted by the timing of payments. Obviously they have just received part of the $33 M payment in Q4.

I did an analysis of the Q3 numbers a week ago in one of the other threads. I came up with YTD revenue of 33M, which is pretty close to the middle of the actual Q3 numbers and the revised October figure. So that seems all pretty reasonable. I was also concerned about cost blow outs. I predicted a conservative 15M and definitely didn't want to go above that figure. It came in at $14M so a tick there too.

Overall on the numbers I'd definitely give DRO a solid passing mark. This is good for shareholders because Oleg has a long history of over promising and over delivering, but that doesn't appear to have occurred here. I hope those days are over.

My questions are about what the "$51m contracted order backlog" really means as the presentation does not explain whether any or all of the backlog is the $33 M backlog. I will used to methodologies to give a range of values

Method 1:
Start with the actual Q3 numbers and assume the backlog refers to the end of Q3. Assuming I accept Oleg's assertion of 68 M in revenue for 2023, that means there is $45 M to come in Q4 and the backlog means that so far forward sales for 2024 are at $6 M

Method 2:
Start with the October numbers and assume the backlog is from that point. That would mean there are $20 M of orders to come in Q4 and the rest will come in 2024. That would leave $31 M.

A range of $6 M - $31 M is not very helpful from a shareholders point of view, so the question remains which one should we believe?

I'd go for something much closer to the lower end.

Reasons are as follows:
1) Always better to go conservative
2) In the actual Q3 numbers the sales were about $7.7 M. If we presume, no payments for the $33 M came in or whatever did come in will be replaced with growth that suggests underly recurring revenue of about $8 M per quarter (again pretty good)
3) No new big orders have been announced in the last 3-4 months, so a quadrupling of revenue seems implausible

My estimate is $8 M (a little higher than the Q3 run-rate)

Applying that run-rate to 2024 that leaves DRO with expected revenue of $32 M. Probably to keep the share price where it is DRO will need to match 2023's. That suggests that DRO needs about $35 M of big orders to retain its position. That's not surprising given that is a little less than last year and a bit easier to achieve. That's ok too.

My view is that all of this tells us that a big order before Christmas (e.g. > $15-20 M) is likely to be a a big positive for the share price otherwise it will probably drift.