RE:Still baffled by the rose coloured glasses.. PTG sold Smart Edge because there was more development work required to produce a premium product. Intel will get it done faster and PTG can start selling it sooner. Makes sense to me.
Gianluca Tucci, Echelon Wealth Partners Inc., Research Division - Research Analyst [18]
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Yes. I know that. That is fantastic. Good job there, Dave. And then just finally here on Smart Edge, I know that there are some things that can't be discussed because of confidentially agreements. But how close are you to generating sales from this technology? And like, what from a technical perspective, if any -- like if anything still has to be achieved in order for customer validation?
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Kevin A. Shank, Pivot Technology Solutions, Inc. - President, CEO & Director [19]
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So there are several different engagements that we're actively involved in, and we expect to see revenue from those entities in the near future. Near future, I would define as, there's a potential late Q2, early Q3 that we could initially see to see some positivity there. We're balancing a couple different variables. We're working very closely with a very large technology partner in the industry, and we have the ability to really -- to win some giant contracts that require us to invest and add features and functions to the capability. You compare and contrast that, if we went out and tried to sell a narrower scope, could you close and receive revenue faster and I think the answer to that is, yes. So we're trying to balance, thread that needle, if you will, around focusing having first revenue as well as making sure that we're adding the features and capability to stay ahead of the marketplace. And we are seeing progress in both fronts, but it is an exercise every day we talk to with our senior leadership on the Smart Edge team and the developers. And we've made some -- those teams have made some extremely good decisions several years ago and focusing on creating an edge technology with an edge architecture was a brilliant concept, an idea, and my hats off to that team. We're -- it's just -- it's a salient conversation with just about every customer we have out there right now. They want to talk about the edge and they want to talk about what's coming and you can just -- what we're seeing, and I'm sure the industry is seeing and you're seeing some articles written about it now, that there is a great chance, don't take my words for it, spend some time and research, you'll see there's a great chance that a lot of these new technologies require that edge-based processing due to latency, due to security, due to additional services that these large entities want to provide to their customers, they need that capability at the edge, and we're well positioned based on some brilliant people in our organization that foresaw this several years ago.
kulewater wrote: I used to be a shareholder. Divested over a year ago at a nice profit. Ever since Kevin took over the revenues have been backsliding as a result of less intake from major customers. Not sure how you can see this as anything but a decay in business health. Yes the margins are a bit better but thats a result of lower revenues and a shift to services. Anyone that thinks this is a good thing should ask themselves if they would rather have 1% of a billion or 100% of 1.
As far as Smart Edge goes they company really sold out shareholders that were being told this was the next great differentiator for PTG and would really boost earnings in the future. But guess what, they sold all that R&D and promise for $25M - thats peanuts. And its a one time event. Nobody is going to invest in the long term prospects of a company based on a one time event that will boost revenues for ONE QUARTER.
The non-exclusive agreement is a joke. Why even put that in a release. Everyone has a non-exclusive agreement with Intel.
The company has seen erosion in revenues - and thats the big take away anyone should be cognizant of as they evaluate this investment.
Just my two cents.