"They also said they are increasing the amount of engineers from 40 to 50 given the amount of opportunity and gm was down given higher amounts of m2m sales ie sp ausnet"Whilst the increase in engineers demonstrates confidence and growth potential it also represents increased R&D costs. Whilst R&D is essential to any business in this space, it is no guarantee for future revenues.
"nbn is ramping up. They are suppose to compete it within 4 years so if they are hooking up say 400k house (but could be more) they really need to start to get things going."I agree that they need to get things going but it may take longer than expected. If you look at the corporate plan, NBN should have covered 144,154 premises by the week ending 21-Aug-14, the latest report shows 116,608 premises covered. Based on NBNCo’s coverage and activation data thus far, I expect 25,000 units to be deployed this year, a 10,000 unit increase from FY13/14.
"you just have to do a scenario of 2 big smart metering contracts for 1m units each could add 40m Ebitda over three years plus all the other biz and the stock will see a massive re rating." You will remember that Ausnet’s 3G smart-meter rollout was meant to be one of the biggest (it not the biggest) rollouts of its kind globally and that was only 110,000 units. I think winning a 1M unit contract is not going to be easy.
"Don't know why anyone would sell on that given any announcement of new partners etc could be imminent."
I know why, partner announcements don’t guarantee nor quantify revenue.
NTC Price at posting:
65.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
