ProStar Holdings Inc. (MAPS:TSX.V) recently went public on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol MAPS. It will not yet have an OTC symbol, so if you are a U.S.-based investor and do not do business with one of the handful of online brokers that allows for buying/selling shares directly on Toronto, you will be briefly out of luck. The company will be listing on the OTC in the next couple of months; prior to that, I suspect we'll see someone come up with a "grey market" symbol, at the least.
Especially with ever more infrastructure activity and spending set to take place in the coming years, most anything that moves the needle on cost savings and greater efficiencies has a bright future. But I have to tell you that when I learned and began to digest ProStar's story, technology, considerable business progress already and more, I was quite blown away!
We've all seen scenes like the above, maybe even on our own street or property in the past. Before many kinds of construction, utility, road and other work can begin, contractors, engineers, etc. must know where underground power, gas and other lines are located. The trouble is, the methods technologically for doing this are quite antiquated, often, beginning with YEARS-old, hard copy "maps."
And that leads to accidents of one kind or another many times daily, some place or other, when these underground lines are damaged.
As I've learned more, it's been amazing to me that there has not been a more precise way to locate these underground lines of various kinds. The need is certainly there, in great part to mitigate the regular damage (and cost) you see in that above graphic. Considering that the 35 million miles of underground pipelines, utility lines, etc., number some 15 times the total length of America's highways, you'd think someone would come up with a more technologically modern way to find and protect the underground ones.
Well, ProStar has done that, and as the company's award-winning, disruptive CEO and President Page Tucker quipped to me recently, ProStar—with that appropriate ticker symbol MAPS—is set to be "the Google Earth of the underground."
In short—and I encourage you to read more at ProStar's website RIGHT HERE—with the company's PointMan system there are no flags, spray paint, etc. What contractors DO have is a state-of-the-art technology that allows them to pinpoint underground structures, lines, etc., to the centimeter.
The company's technology is being endorsed and embraced rapidly. The state of Colorado (where the company is headquartered, in Grand Junction) will now be mandating that no state-funded infrastructure work may proceed without those in charge using PointMan. Those of us following the company suspect that other municipalities will follow.
But perhaps the most impressive tie-up for ProStar thus far is its relationship with $18 billion market cap infrastructure, utilities and transportation giant Trimble, Inc. (TRMB:NASDAQ). Early last month the company announced RIGHT HERE that it had completed its platform's integration with Trimble's receivers (the original tie-up with Trimble was first announced last Summer.)
So now, ProStar is available through Trimble's dealer network as well. Engineers, contractors, etc., can buy ProStar's app straight from Trimble, and those customers are not Trimble's clients, but ProStar's.
As I will detail further in some follow-up comments a little later, the revenue and profit potential for ProStar is substantial. Its app/cloud platform will commonly sell for $2,000 or so, a pittance compared with the costs that engineers and contractors face especially when things go wrong using antiquated processes. With some governments (like Colorado) and tie-ups like Trimble on board (and the arrangement with Trimble is NOT exclusive) the sky (or rather, unchallenged subterranean hegemony) seems to be the limit.
If you look up MAPS on the TSX.V you will see a price of ~CA$0.40/share. I do not expect it to stay there. So don't let grass grow under your feet!
ProStar Holdings is started as a BUY and added to my list of growth-oriented companies.