My thoughts (for what they are worth) is they may well be struggling from lolly shop syndrome. You know a kid goes into a lolly shop with a $ to buy some red frogs. When they get in there they see so many other lollies they have never even imagined. So they stand around for ages trying to decide which ones to buy. Eventually they walk out happier than they imagined, but with no red frogs in the bag. They had a clear well defined model of 4 sats in up to 20 clusters selling a maritime based DaaS model. Andy made the comment quite a while ago that they have been overawed by the requests/suggestions for application of their tech/data in a much wider range of uses. Many of those ideas were coming from potential customers. Then we started to hear about tracking illegal mining and logging etc on land (obviously). Some murmurings about "in space" communication fro the space mining sector. Then there was a growing closeness to the USA and the trials they have been involved in. That followed the launch of the MaaS concept. Next we find they can now process saleable useful date from as little as 2 sats in a cluster. Soon after they announce they can process data for other people's sats. The red frog is starting to be forgotten. So in a more direct answer to your ? 786, I think the answer would have to be "absolutely". I have suspected for a while that the KSF3:Observer launch with its delays, may have actually been targetted in part or full to run as a trial for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) contract they scored in September. Furthermore, in the grand scheme of things the cost of building/launching/commissioning 2/3/4 sat clusters is not that expensive. The ROC if they get things right is immense. In the future I suspect they may well send up a standard cluster for "general" use, along with another cluster or two of "specific contract" sats on the same launch. But the MaaS model opens up all those prospects. I always assumed the MaaS model meant they would supply data for a specific "Mission" rather than a longer term contract. However, it could be interpreted as Kleos providing entire "Mission" (read launch or cluster) as a service for a client. The kids will always want the red frogs, but some of them will want the musk sticks, hard heads, and licorice allsorts as well. Kleos is struggling at the moment to get their hands on the red frogs, possibly because of the distraction of all the other possibilites. But they have to pursue all these options before another lolly shop opens up down the street.
KSS Price at posting:
16.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
