Universal mCloud’s business is to optimize the performance and maintenance of “things”: AssetCare™. Sound mundane? These things are hi-tech assets. In a world of increasingly advanced and complex technology, there are literally $10’s of trillions invested in these hi-tech assets. Optimization and maintenance are crucial operational priorities, for two reasons.
Optimizing performance (and minimizing operating costs) can often be the determining factor in whether such advanced technology can remain financially viable. Secondly, for many of these assets, the highest standards of maintenance are required to prevent “catastrophic failures”. Depending on the nature of the asset, such failures can result in sky-high replacement costs, extremely costly down-time, and/or loss of life. This is serious business.
On
May 1, 2018; the Company provided investors with a six-month operational update. There were many highlights:
- Doubled “connected assets” under AssetCare™ from 6,000 to 12,600
- Adjusted EBITDA approaching break-even as of Q1 2018
- 25% revenue increase from Q4 2017 to Q1 2018
- 63% increase in gross margins over same period
- Total liabilities reduced by $4.1 million
- Cash position increased from $430,000 to $1.8 million from Q4 to Q1
What sets apart MCLD in this enormous space is innovation. With the stakes so high for its corporate clients, the Company has taken the optimization and maintenance of hi-tech assets to a new level. Universal mCloud’s recipe for success is a blend of “the Internet of Things” (IoT) with Artificial Intelligence.
In the original Stockhouse Feature, MCLD’s President and CEO, Russ McMeekin clarified this business model.
Intelligent Internet is the combination of Artificial Intelligence with Internet of Things (IoT), used to provide actionable results in real-time. We’ve taken the tech terminology SaaS and coined our own term: “RaaS”, Results as a Service.
Delivering its Results as a Service from the Cloud provides the Company’s clients with one critical advantage: 24/7 monitoring of assets with real-time reporting of all data. In the 21st century, nothing less will suffice given the cost and importance of these hi-tech assets.
For example, with respect to wind turbines (one class of assets for which MCLD provides AssetCare™), real-time reporting of maintenance issues is absolutely vital. Even small debris that gets sucked into one of these turbines can quickly produce a massive maintenance bill – and utility down-time which such clients seek to avoid at any cost.
Artificial Intelligence is the newest innovation to be incorporated into AssetCare, augmented by a key acquisition in January 2018. This acquisition not only broadened the Company’s AI capabilities, it added a new division (and clients) to operations. A Stockhouse podcast gets into greater depth on this new ingredient.
How does Artificial Intelligence factor into AssetCare™? The Company’s RaaS platform learns over time. AssetCare™ is already the new standard of care for hi-tech assets. By adding AI to this industry-leading technology, AssetCare™ improves on its performance the longer it is utilized.
Once Universal mCloud’s AssetCare™ is plugged into the operations of these clients, this creates a strong incentive to continue with AssetCare™ because of the significant investments of time, labour, and money necessary to introduce a competing optimization/maintenance program. As AI-learning improves on AssetCare™, this barrier to entry for competitors grows even larger.
With a potential market of $10 of trillions in assets, MCLD is in the enviable position of needing to focus its energies on only the most-lucrative niches of this massive space. Currently, the Company is targeting:
- HVAC (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning) optimization
- Wind turbine diagnostics
- Electrical transformer diagnostics
- Diagnostics for advanced aircraft, such as stealth fighter jets
Its extensive list of Fortune-500 clients includes diverse entities like Bank of America, Dairy Queen, Southern California Edison, and Lockheed Martin – not to mention the United States Department of Defense.
In Stockhouse’s January full-length feature, CEO McMeekin (also a co-founder of MCLD) stated the Company’s near-term goal: quadrupling its 6,000 connected assets by the end of 2018. With a total of 12,600 connected assets already, Universal mCloud is well ahead of that schedule.
MCLD is on track to achieve its longer-term goal of at least 100,000 connected assets within 3 years. Given the cutting-edge nature of this technology and the Company’s impressive performance over its first 6 months, this should provide investors with considerable confidence on the attainability of this goal moving forward.
The maintenance of assets doesn’t sound like an exciting investment opportunity. Finding a Company that possesses a superior technology platform in a multi-trillion dollar space will certainly whet the appetite of investors.
www.mcloudcorp.com
FULL DISCLOSURE: Universal mCloud Corp. is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.