Big pictureIt's great that this settlement with Motorola has been achieved and the Apple situation is big with potential but people should remember that the real long-term story here is on the ITS side. Here's a good place to start to get a sense of where this could go.
https://www.kapsch.net/_Resources/Persistent/3ea7c985f9b5bdba952e24157e9a8bdb4a9c9a10/KTC_Annual_report_2019-20.pdf
In tolling, Kapsch has been the elephant for a long time. And you can see their sales in 2018/19 were 737.8 million euros--roughly US$850 million. That's the kind of scale that can make being in ITS very solidly profitable (as Kapsch used to be).
Kapsch is likely a nice target to have in your sights because since 2018/19 they have gotten into all sorts of trouble. You can see from that report how the following year, 2019/20, their results fell off a cliff in spite of the fact that sales fell only marginally--which is suggestive of management problems. And their balance sheet is kind of an ugly mess.
To get a sense of the importance of scale in ITS, especially tolling, you could look at the results of Norway's Q-Free. They've been doing roughly US$100 million in sales--mostly tolling--but they've lost money for each of the last 9 years. Some of that may just be bad management. Nevertheless, it suggests that you want to get big, and clearly that will be what our CEO is aiming for. This is not ultimately a $100-200 million sales story. Not if it's going to work.
Regarding Kapsch, there was an interesting development a few weeks ago.
https://www.kapsch.net/en/ktc/info-point/press/ktc-20210915-pr-en
Curious that they felt the need to sell off their Italy business. Kapsch frames it as something that will lead to a fruitful partnership with the buyer, Safety21, but I'd think they still can't be happy about having to unload their Italy operations. An aside: I'm sure Paul will have his eye on Safety21 as a competitor worthy of respect.
So it looks like Kapsch is still something of a mess. Another aside: I won't be surprised if Quarterhill's new Europe manager comes from Kapsch. Pure speculation.
Meanwhile, I would imagine that Quarterhill is working hard to integrate the offerings of ETC and IRD. ETC will be pitching their customers on what the new ETC+IRD can do for them. So too with IRD talking to their customers. My guess is the customers on both sides will be intrigued. Those conversations may ultimately be even more important than what happens in the courtroom on Friday.