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Very ambitious future forecasts. even half of that would be a phenomenal. there is no way of knowing whether elevate will gain traction or not. All eyes on results next week, with turnover expected to be down all eyes on that cash balance
It will be interesting to read the Allenby forecasts when they are next published. Assuming they feel confident enough to put some figures out which they didn't last time.
My own thoughts are that 2024 will be revenues of £2.5m, EBITDA loss of £3.5m, with 2025 revenues £13m, EBITDA profit around £3m. But this assumes they are still capitalising quite a lot of R&D spend. Cash at end of 2023, 4 and 5 of £5.5m, £0.5m and £2m respectively. End of year (paying) subscriber numbers 2024: 10,000; 2025: 100,000.
Incidentally, BIRD spoke to over 300 people in terms of asking about such things as tool requirements and interface design etc etc ..and they are also ensuring that third party tools will be able to be accessible from within the App at extra cost, when needed
so...it is like an highly professional tool for Professional Teams and Prosumers ...with a strong ability to grow a Community who can share and collaborate across the world ...
I guess similar to WordPress but for video and audio editing, rather than Blog creation
In Enterprise where BIRD are largely involved in News and Sport and Entertainment , they don't so much use Adobe Premier Pro ...that is more for Film and TV show post production editing ...a different market and customer.
In local news now there is evidence that reporters are expected to edit their reports as well as film them ....as the journalism sector goes through huge,huge changes ...BIRD has started to be involved at that level
Avid is definitely used within the sector but there are many users who complain about AVID .... remains to be seen whether they have improved since going to new Private owners ... Avid is probably in need of a strong fully cloud based editor
BIRD Enterprise is used by large organisation OEM such as EVS whom they have strong, multi year contracts
With Elevate once again they are not targeting the heavy spending Film and TV show production company customers who use the likes of Adobe Premier Pro, After Effects etc
Their initial target is within the $6.2 billion "Professional Teams and Prosumer" market where the "hundreds of free editors" are just not sufficient for their needs and are too basic in terms of tools offered , and there is no collaboration tools available within them ... all such Professional Teams will need a paid subscriber model of some sort to meet their needs of collaboration
Elevate will be sold as an App from an App store although can be directed via their website
hTTps://magnific.ai/
That was launched at the end of November 2023 and in 6 weeks got 400k registered users and a comment from Elon Musk
"Right now the Pro plan costs $39/mo, the Premium plan $99/mo and the Business plan $299/mo. When you opt for an annual subscription, you get two months free. You can cancel at any time."
All Apps are risky, but it is about researching your market need and target market and increasing your probability of success, and as such reducing the risk factor
In the UK investors are generally very pessimistic about such risks , more so than say in the US
Poker, i think that this has always been their challenge. Larger organisations don't buy into their proprietary Codec. They all want Adobe/Avid etc which is part of the media ecosystem. Hence why customer still pay high prices for Adobe Premier Pro. At the bottom end of the market, there are hundreds of free editors, many of which are cloud based. So not a good place for Bird to be positioning. Also a volume play for low cost licences is a big change for a business selling b2b software. Sales, marketing, everything changes. It has to be sold off a website as the sales cost won't carry people costs. This is a very risky play
I think there is probably some churn going on within this share
some recent buyers sold again when they first saw the price sliding back , and now some buyers waiting on the sidelines choosing to get back in .. a lot of the same shares just getting churned over , causing the volatility
There were two sales reported yesterday towards the end of the day. The first was a 200K sale followed by the second which showed as a sale but for a slightly lower number. In fact the second was a purchase as the transaction was a Sale & ISA (reported on another BB by the investor). So actually there were more purchases than sales for the day.
A large trade was reported late. It appears the big seller is still around. To sell you need buyers so maybe price dropped to entice more buyers. Once the big seller has finished selling, or crosses certain percentage of ownership points then an RNS will need to be released. The same reporting standards apply to a big buyer. These large share transfers can happen over long time scales in order to maintain a stable market. It will be very interesting to see who is buying all these shares.
Any one have a view on what is driving the drop today, are there any rumours of a delay in the release date beyond Q1?
" Elevate.io offers a big range of services that potential users have said they want and ensures that they are all compatible."
There will also be the possibility for third-party providers to "plug-in" added assets that a video creator can access at extra cost such a stock video footage library, graphics , animations,audio effects etc etc ..... so..in theory..whatever you need will be available to you , as the plug-ins are added
There is also likely to be a Community forum and a Community for Users to connect,communicate,share ideas,tips etc as there are with various Adobe/Microsoft forums
Ian McDonough CEO :
"H.264 and H.265 are fantastic for streaming high-quality content, but generally in one direction. If you try and manipulate those codecs back and forth in an edit environment, they suffer latency and frame inaccuracy."
By contrast, Blackbird's codec doesn't apply MPEG compression (typically Long GOP) standards and file formats to media, but works in software through JavaScript.
we don't store original content, in the cloud, just the proxy files, and because Blackbird encoded versions can only be read by another Blackbird player or interface, the platform is highly secure
A rights holder will be able to allow unlimited sharing of a clip from their content, but anyone would be accessing it from the same point. Should there come a point where a rights package is no longer valid, you can just delete it once and all those links around the world will delete also.
His analogy is that competitors that have tried to solve this cloud post-production conundrum have put wings on a train to get it to fly, whereas "we created an aeroplane from the ground up."
Adobe Premiere Pro prices are here, not the cheapest https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html . You mention the 'Gold standard' well the 'gold standard' disappeared decades ago. 'Elevate' is a greener solution, the solution for now and the future, creators will pick up on this aspect very quickly. Computer servers burn lots of energy, the most efficient software and 'bandwidth time', like for like, will win.
My understanding is that while what Adobe does is important there are many more things that elevate.io offers that Adobe doesn't. So Adobe users often have to buy other often mutually incompatible services.
elevate.io offers a big range of services that potential users have said they want and ensures that they are all compatiible.
$12.99 per month for my holiday videos and occasional YouTube clips sounds an excellent starting point. Maybe at this lower price entry point a 'Powered by Blackbird' or the logo should appear as a non removable watermark for a few seconds in top left corner of output, just to let viewers know about the tech behind the video.
It's hopeful and I like their feature set. However pricing is not far off adobe cloud subscription which is the gold standard. How are BIRD going to distinguish themselves in this arena if not by pricing?
Elevate.io pricing
$12.99 per month
$30 - $60 per month for professionals.
Margin is over 70% I believe.
Their target is a million users, so their fortunes could change very quickly here.
I was thinking that 10,000+ paying users would be a good result for the end of '24.
Gross margin should be a lot better than 50% but marketing costs will also be high. Not sure any reduction in dev costs would be a good step given that we still at the start of the journey. If anything investment should increase once market demand is more proven.
Get to the end of this year with lots of good momentum and then raise a chunk of cash at a good SP to sell/market the hell out of it in '25.
If cash burn remains at approx £4m (increased marketing costs but decreased development costs) then surely it will not take a huge number of paid users to reach breakeven, at say £25/month (£300 a year) and assuming a 50% gross margin? My maths says barely 30,000 paid users - if the product is genuinely top class then I see this as not at all challenging...
Ofcourse they are investing money but at some point there has to be a return as they are investing other peoples money.
As usual in stock market the directors look after themselves and the shareholders take the risk. It’s a dream in my opinion and very few come true.
How can you say it’s nonsense. ?. Do you really think they’ll be profitable in two years. Over supply of rose tinted glasses watching bird. Just because SS , Mo et all have had success in the past doesn’t mean they’ll have success again. There is no debt as they are adept at fundraising. What if they didn’t get support in the raise, they’d be in trouble. I’ll prepare myself to be shot down by the bird fan club.
" They are losing money .."
They are INVESTING money , which is what smaller companies tend to do , in order to create products and services that then seek revenue as a result of such investment. Revenue which in time seeks to provide a successful return on the investment made.
Their current revenue comes from a niche market whilst their new product will seek to attract revenue from a $20 billion market for tools and services within the $250 billion creative economy open to individual users and business users alike
Whether anyone is enthusiastic about such a new product is down to the individual but if you are not, then maybe it is best to look elsewhere for such "enthusiasm"
Clearly there have been a number of large trades mostly notified late recently. If they were from an IS it probably makes little difference to the price. I wonder, however, how the market would react if it was a big player aiming to get a foothold of, say, 11% (enough to retain their shares if there were a hostile bid). The cost would be petty cash to them and would send a clear signal to their competitors in the market place.
Interesting article in Australia's Media Week (https://www.mediaweek.com.au/is-tiktok-taking-over-google-as-the-search-engine-of-choice/) saying Tik Tok is overtaking Google as the search engine of choice for Gen Z-ers there. Won't all this extra content creation be good for us BIRD shareholders ?
Sisteract. You talk nonsense re requirement for cash, I quote from RNS last September "Cash burn, excluding proceeds from share issues and transfers from short term investments, increased to £1,921k (6 months to 30 June 2022: £1,253k) due to lower revenues and higher staff costs to work on our Creator SaaS product
· Cash and short-term investments of £8,177k (30 June 2022: £11,586k) and no debt" So they look good for at least 2 years.
Lots of news lately about their business in America expanding.
Really can't understand where all this enthusiam is coming from. Just because they are launching a new product everything is going to be rosy in the garden. They are losing money, fund raise probably due within a year or so, 30m outstanding share options so the Directors are looking after themselves. This in my opinion is a traders share.... nothing more. !