brave souls rewarded today, page-24

I'm still unsure of the base level of understanding in this forum, so I'll keep this very high level.

IMHO, it appears that many investors don't concern themselves with the actual underlying business model and focus more on the market sentiment that's often led by a company's financial reporting. That may be OK, I'm still green in terms of stock trading. It doesn't matter in the short-term if you know the value of something, if the market doesn't have the same level of understanding.

Part of what Appen do could be thought of as a production line. Originally there were experts who built everything themselves. This was obviously high cost, but also high quality. Some production lines are fully automated. Some are semi-automated with a line of people doing separate tasks. This process of determining what tasks need quality and what tasks can be done by machine is itself, being automated. Appen basically know how to design a really good production line with a line of people and collection of machines.

Some of the challenges are:
- the products that their production lines produce need to change (dependent on how quickly their customers advance)
- they need to keep up with the latest R&D to ensure they have the best machines for whatever is being made
- they have a labour-hire / workforce component that relies on low-cost tasks
- workers need to be continuously trained to work with new tools
- workers rights may change
- the products being produced may advance too fast and laws may change
- they are expanding into China (a country that's famous for reverse engineering, replicating at low cost, etc.) which can brings both gains & competition