Catchacold, quite a reasonable thought, although there are a few...

Catchacold, quite a reasonable thought, although there are a few things to consider regarding SFI vs NEA.
As you quite rightly point out NEA with a market cap around $240 million provides some indication of how high SFI can get over time, plus some, and SFI technology is lower cost /sq km of image captured. But we must acknowledge that NEA has been in the market now for a considerable number of years, therefore it has built up a customer base in Australia that maybe retained at least for the length of existing contracts, plus maybe "sticky" for longer if their customers are happy with the NEA product/service. I can't see SFI "stealing" customers in the initial stages, as some users might prefer to hold out until SFI has been operating a sufficient time to prove its capable of providing an acceptable level of service.

As regards NEA vs SFI business in Australia I believe that the two product offerings are quite different (but happy to be corrected!), with NEA having far more hands on deck to build a very large customer base, whereas SFI will be more reliant on larger contracts, and by their very nature will be more "lumpy" (and hopefully sufficiently material to make individual releases to the ASX on occasions). Thus again NEA has a higher cost base, both in the gaining of the imagery (lower flight path, more flying time) and higher labour costs for sales, whereas SFI has a lower cost base for both imagery capture plus sales.

But in North America of course its a completely different circumstance, and the fact that SFI business there is essentially at minimal cost to the company, and linked to the biggest provider of imagery in this largest of economies, we should see considerable upside for the share price.

As for waking up one day and seeing the stock price taking off, that is possible, but I'm a little more cautious of this happening within the next couple of months unless there is something completely out of the blue happening. Why do I say that? Based on the latest announcement we know that SFI expects to begin commercial operations in North America in Q3 2017 (ie current quarter). Thus there is an Appendix 5B due in the coming weeks and this will not have any income from the Eagleview partnership (other than reimbursement of past expenses incurred by SFI). Since the Australian rollout has only begun with CASA certification in late May I doubt that any income will have occurred, and if there was it would be minimal.

My feeling is that first income will be in this current quarter, but only an amount that confirms our expectations of future far more substantial revenue from both North America and a smaller but growing revenue base from Australia.

As this relates to share price movement, who knows? Seems to me there are a number of sellers who are quite happy to sell stocks at higher levels and then sit back and wait for a day of weakness to buy back in again. And whilst the immediate future is probably vaguish that strategy is probably ok, but my view is that at some point in time, perhaps a bit further out, there will be sellers who will rue the day they sold out, and have to chase the price up if they want to get back into the stock. Personally I have been buying slowly on weakness, but am not selling, as I want to build up a larger position in coming months, presumably in the mid 9's cent range.