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Hi Leycrjb.
£150m is a massive stretch at 7.5x ARR.
5x ARR = £100m = . 140p.
If, and it's a big if, Sycurio comes back again, it'd probably start at 120p and maybe they'd stretch to 140p/150p. Can't see it going higher than that. The main reason I'm thinking about it more seriously is because of all the management changes at Sycurio that Victor has flagged up. Sycurio appears weaker than in May 2023. They look to have more reasons to acquire PCIP.
Hello Leycrjb - do you expect Sycurio to come again with a higher offer? It seems the most logical move. It's interesting to note that the Chairman, CEO, CFO & CTO bought shares in March 2022. Did they think Sycurio was coming to come with a hard offer?
-September 2021: Sycurio initiated patent case.
-March 2022: Sycurio Chairman asks PCIP Chairman if they are open to being acquired.
-May 2023: Sycurio offers 90p to the largest PCIP shareholders.
Did Sycurio start the patent case to acquire PCIP at a knockdown price? Is that the philosophy?
Isn't Livingbridge's philosophy to acquire PCIP? The first move was Sept 2021, then March 2022 and May 2023.
Good Morning Riffgo,
Narrows it down, in the sense that acquiring PCIP resets Sycurio with a top management team.
Financial Times - March 5th, 2024
One of the dominant factors behind overall private equity returns over the past four decades was declining interest rates. That has now gone into reverse.
Debt is the primary fuel that powers the private equity engine, and between the early 1980s and the 2020s, the cost of that fuel haltingly fell to zero. As a result, even bad deals could be rescued by refinancing at cheaper and cheaper rates, and mediocre ones turned into cash cows to be milked through dividend recaps.
Moreover, four decades of falling interest rates helped increase corporate earnings and swell equity market valuations. Indeed, a Federal Reserve paper published last year estimated that lower interest expenses and tax rates explain almost half of all growth in US corporate profits between 1989 and 2019. At the same time, valuations of those earnings streams have increased because of lower discount rates used to calculate their worth.
Despite private equity insisting that they improve companies, Bain’s latest report on the industry estimates that “nearly all the value creation” in private equity-owned companies between 2012 and 2022 actually came from revenue growth and multiple expansion. “Margin expansion barely registers,” the consultancy noted drily.
With interest rates now higher and unlikely to return to zero — though they’re unlikely to return to the 1980s highs either — the private equity golden era is almost certainly over. Even if central banks begin to trim rates, the scale of the decline from the early ’80s will never be replicated.
2024
-Sycurio CEO departs from company.
-Sycurio CRO departs from website.
-Sycurio HRO departs from company.
-Sycurio Non-Exec departs from company.
Sycurio's options vis a vis PCIP:
1. Continue court cases all the way.
2. Make peace with PCIP.
3. Offers a knockout price for PCIP.
1. Going all the way could cost £8m to £10m, and statistically the probability of winning is low.
2. Stops the cash bleed.
3. Brings in a management team who can reset Sycurio and stop a possible future writedown for Livingbridge.
Any thoughts on which option Sycurio will select?
"In business, which is essentially daily warfare, preemptively destroying your potential destroyer is the only logical move."
-Andriy Burkov
I see on Linkedin that Sycurio is advertising for three sales managers, two in the States and one in the UK. My presumption that they're decaying looks to be wrong-headed.
Interesting. Thanks!
Eckoh were caught out by the Covid acceleration to the cloud and had to pay top dollar to get a cloud offering via Syntec.
Both the main competitors to PCIP are on the back foot with their on-premise legacy issues. Eckoh has little to no channel strategy and Sycurio is trying to kick-start such a strategy six years after PCIP instigated one.
Sycurio's best hope for a viable future is to buy PCIP. Otherwise, they are a decaying asset and will become a big write-down for the owners. It could take 150p to get the big shareholders interested.
The Zoom Boom could start in H1 25 and into H2 25 and FY26. If that starts rolling and the channel partners are firing JB's idea of 30%+ growth is ementinaly doable. The operational gearing would be transformative. If the luck runs hard then the share could hit 150p to 200p sometime in 2025. 100p looks doable in 2024.
PCIP has had two big strokes of luck: Covid and Zoom. The bad luck was the patent case, which is temporary, the two strokes of good luck are permanent.
#multibagger
Zeus Kerravala - October 2023
"While Zoom is a late entrant into the contact center, AI and the integration with UC act as a disruptive force and opens the door for Zoom to compete, Zoom had already been developing its contact center products with an eye toward nontraditional contact center use cases; these integrations allow the company to appeal to customers ranging from SMBs to enterprise-level operations.
During the analyst briefing, Michelle Couture, Customer Experience Product Marketing stated, Zoom is using AI “To deliver one, unified journey.” If it can do that, Zoom has better than a puncher's chance of gaining market share.
While the UC and CC spaces are both very crowded with some tough competition, Zoom has one enviable asset that none of the others do and that is that users generally like and prefer Zoom. While IT departments can force users to use Microsoft Teams for internal meetings and collaboration, Zoom tends to find its way into functions that are customer-facing as it “just works.” The announcements at Zoomtopia broaden the Zoom platform and bring that Zoom-like experience to a broader set of workers with more use cases. Entering documents so shortly after announcing e-mail can be considered bold but being bold is likely what it takes to win in this space."
https://www.nojitter.com/team-collaboration-tools-workspaces/zoom-unveils-docs-upgrades-contact-center-offerings
Michael Mauboussin's book 'The Success Equation, Untangling Skill and Luck' is a good point to look at probably the three biggest transformational catalysts in PCIP right now.
1. Zoom.
2. New user interface with expanded payment capabilities.
3. Payment Service Provider upgrade.
Points 2 & 3 are skill.
Point 1 is luck but skill lead to the landing of the whale.
====
"Substantial upgrade to payment service provider integration capabilities, expected to reduce TTGL and effort required to onboard new PSPs."
-PCIP: 29/2/24.
"These new developments will also incorporate an enhanced go-to-market model that differentiates between customer type and size, empowering operational efficiencies at PCI Pal which long term will reduce our Time To Value (historically reported as TTGL or Time-to-go-live). This advancement will open the door for partners and customers to self-provision our services, which equally will provide more value to them."
-PCIP: 9/11/23.
====
YouTube - 22nd July, 2019
The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck | Michael Mauboussin | Talks at Google
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JLfqBsX5Lc&ab_channel=TalksatGoogle
Zoom "CCaaS" Boom!
CX Today - 12th October, 2023
"No offence but it's probably going to make the first Zoom boom of video meeting look like nothing."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpmVXi32b0&ab_channel=CXToday
Yahoo Finance - 7th December, 2023
"The global market for Call Centers estimated at US$314.5 Billion in the year 2022, is projected to reach a revised size of US$494.7 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 5.8% over the analysis period 2022-2030."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-call-centers-business-analysis-090800828.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACzcGFfiNwmrbSGTLLL53ZHApWvjlPpX2bvYGAZU9aniTOhQbRUZubFh-98HBlaCDq1Oeqo7PKVwPYPqYXVesITCllxhi9HVnAcx-Rm7rDMzr0fEPMrJvTkYmpY-d5v0RsqU-dZIzsCRXQq8hLdq2g34uWGGYBLYmIYqWEOYLyEC#:~:text=The%20Call%20Centers%20market%20in,Billion%20in%20the%20year%202022.
Starting nine minutes in the CEO at Content Guru explains why CcaaS is at the start of a multi-year bull market and what AI means in the contact center:
CX Today - 3rd April, 2024
Content Guru Confirms $150MN CCaaS Megadeal, the Biggest of 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JohaZyC7yGA&ab_channel=CXToday
1st April, 2024
The Top Contact Center Security and Compliance Vendors in 2024
Pindrop
PCI PAL
Oak
Smarsh
Cisco
Theta Lake
Dubber
IBM
https://www.cxtoday.com/contact-centre/the-top-contact-center-security-and-compliance-vendors-in-2024/
February 21, 2024
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Talkdesk®, Inc., a global AI-powered contact center leader for enterprises of all sizes, today announced that Albert (Al) Caravelli, an accomplished executive experienced in transforming sales and alliances organizations at some of the world’s leading software companies, has joined the company as senior vice president of Alliances and Partners.
In this role, Caravelli is responsible for expanding and nurturing Talkdesk’s growing ecosystem of strategic technology alliance partners, global system integrators, and global service providers.
Caravelli comes to Talkdesk following nearly nine years at cloud security company Zscaler, where he most recently served as global vice president of strategic alliances and advisory firms, responsible for leading Zscaler’s go-to-market strategy and execution. During this time, he was instrumental in the formation of strategic alliances with multiple companies, including Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, HCL, Infosys, AT&T, BT, Cognizant, Deutsche Telekom, OBS, Telefonica, TCS, TechMahindra, LTIM, Verizon, Vodafone, and Wipro.
Before his tenure at Zscaler, Caravelli served as senior director of worldwide global alliances at HP Software, where he drove the transformation of the global alliances function, resulting in better strategic engagement with partners and new joint offerings. He has also served in alliances leadership at Jive Software and Mercury Interactive and in sales roles at Asera, Nielsen Claritas, and The Nielsen Company. Caravelli started his career as a sales manager at Nestle.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240220064868/en/Talkdesk-Hires-Software-Veteran-Albert-Caravelli-to-Lead-Grow-Strategic-Alliances-and-Partners
Channel Futures - 26th February, 2024
Ex-Zscaler Exec Hopes Track Record Will Help Boost Talkdesk Revenue
We learned why the new Talkdesk exec believes his experience as a CCaaS outsider will lead to Talkdesk channel success.
...All this brings us to today, where Caravelli hopes he can transform Talkdesk revenue via the channel as he learns an entirely new industry.
Looking to "recruit the right partners" to help grow his team, Caravelli also said he is betting on the total addressable market in the CCaaS space to extend some opportunity for growth.
"It is over $300 billion in the space, which is amazing," Caravelli told Channel Futures. ..
https://www.channelfutures.com/people-on-the-move/ex-zscaler-exec-hopes-track-record-will-help-boost-talkdesk-revenue
On the Morgan Stanley webcast on 4th March 2024, starting at eight minutes the Zoom CFO discusses how they need a PCI solution to go after Enterprise customers and how that's in the works.
https://investors.zoom.us/news-events/events
The original link is wrong, this is the correct one:
https://www.cxtoday.com/contact-centre/zoom-contact-center-licenses-triple-as-its-ccaas-business-surges/