Thanks absolutemalarky, You make some powerful points and its nice to get some industry insight. My only thought after looking at your comments over the last year, is that Meltwater is private equity funded. They recently raise $175 million USD and basically point towards internal investment into their software products, at the time of this 2019 raise. In a round about way a literal interpretation of this commentary suggests Meltwater is still burning money. The quantum of such an $175 million internal investment into software development, for a software company with 2000 employees that has been systematically investing in buying software companies while also developing their own IP doesnt quite reasonate. It also doesn't reconcile with Meltwaters 2017 commentary on the back of their $60 million USD raise, where they mostly talked both about acquiring IP and also “We will also look at companies with a dominant position in a particular market or vertical.” At some point Meltwater's private equity owners want a pay day and they are now 2 years down the road from their initial investment. Yes the Meltwater tech is likely to win Australian market share over the next few years, but why not take the dominate share of the Australian market (plus Asian revenues) for 1.5X EV/Sales (against a crude Meltwater multiple of > 4X, - Note This is where Cision trades) and progressively replace the ISD tech. Australian would become a cash cow.
ISD Price at posting:
20.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held