2. Europe will hold some pleasant and very large surprises this year. Doubt many $$$s will be required as, unlike the US, the large majority of business in Europe will be outright sales in the same manner as Australia. COD business unlike the US BOOM business.
3 and 4. Gatso and ACS have always been close. ACS(previously Lockheed Martin IMS and before that USPT) originally had almost a complete monopoly in the US using Gatso wet film cameras, they dropped the ball by sticking with wet flim and believing digital would never work. Gatso has always supplied ACSs cameras and both Gatso and ACS are frantically trying to catch up with digital but Redflex has a huge head start. Gatso wet film cameras (often referred to as 'Multinovas') were sold throughout the world including considerable numbers in Australia some of which are still in use. Trouble with wet film is that the cameras have a very poor capture and conversion rate, often less than 40% of infringements end up as citations. The Redflex digital cameras achieve rates almost double this. Thus Redflex has been even able to win existing ACS contracts off ACS as the incumbent, normally a very hard ask in this industry.
Strictly speaking the Chicago trial was between ACS and Redflex with Redflex using all their own gear but with ACS using the new Gatso digital cameras which were a disaster. The thing with digital cameras is that the whole go to whoa system has to meld together thus ACS had to buy in Gatso digital cameras and endeavour to build a back office system to take the digital feed. Took Redflex 6 long years and even then Redflex ended up having to make even their own cameras to ensure excellence and a faultless front to back system.
4. again. Gatso only sells cameras, it is not a head to head competitor with Redflex or the others. Gatso is huge in the US as a camera supplier in respect of their wet film cameras still being used by ACS. At a guess ACS would have 450 systems contracted in the US and of these some 400 would still be the old wet film. Redflex now has in excess of 600 systems contracted in the US with just a few old ones still wet film (mainly from the TSS takeover) and these are being converted ASAP.
Plenty more but don't want to bore people.
RDF Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
