Chris Heminway, Exec-Chair at Time To ACT, explains why now is the right time for the Group to IPO. Watch the video here.
It was mentioned by Starcom in the October ‘20 trading update Hunky…
Starcom, as a provider of monitoring and tracking technology to Zero, has a potential opportunity to also supply this technology to the Polaris-Zero joint venture over the coming years. Starcom and Zero have already initiated negotiations about this exciting development, a lthough it is impossible at this stage to indicate if this opportunity will come to fruition and the timing of such.
Not long to wait to see if Cypher 111 is going to be part of the 1st of the collaborations between Zero & Polaris. Launch date annouced as 1st December…. we could be in for a bumper week of News flow….
https://www.instagram.com/p/CWwpP2BlqwH/?utm_medium=copy_link
Looking at the bottom of the AGM RNS, it would appear that a new PR company has been employed. Very impressive looking website and an established list of clients.... https://yellowjerseypr.com/
Thanks Hunky.
Your comment from the BoD related to when Pepsi & CropX 1st annouced thier collaboration, if i remember your posts correctly, around August?
So the comment from the BoD doesn't relate to CropX commiting to the thousands of sensors they are manufacturing (October), is that correct?.
Interesting article below, from October '21. It points towards CropX having signed an agrrement to have around 30k sensors manufactured (Back of a cigarette packet calcs assuming 5m Danems = 1.2m acres - 1 senosor per 40 acres = 30k sensors).
Speculation here, but....In August CropX signed an agreement to supply PepsiCo with Sensors... 2 months later an agreement to manufacture '1000's of sensors to be deployed over 5m Danums of land'
Potentially massive news for Starcom --- The SaaS alone would put the company into profit....
https://www.nistec.com/nistec-will-manufacture-thousands-of-soil-sensors-for-cropx-to-be-deployed-across-5-million-dunams-of-crop-fields-throughout-the-world/
Check out the LinkedIn video in this tweet… PepsiCo are installing already
https://twitter.com/pjk28821524/status/1459476912728948736?s=21
Hunky... Great ****hing, another angle to throw into the mix...The wording doesn't really state that the company is a shipper in it's own right... but 'a major company in the field of 'tracking & monitoring'.... there are plenty of very big competitors to Starcom that are very well established in the US.. Orbcomm & CalAmp to name two. Possible perhaps, that one of these are looking at Star's products to fill a gap in their own offerings. Developing a device like Lokies would take 2plus years... or just buy a small competitors offering... time will tell.
Zero have launched a new bike for 2022, the SR, that now incorporates CYPHER III plus. An enhanced version of CYPHER III that allows further bike functionality to be added to any bike including improved range & charge time. That’s three bikes now that contain Starcom tech…looks like the existing bikes with CYPHER III can be upgraded with the same improved features too.
A little more detail on the CropX deal… headcount will increase by 30 to 75 staff worldwide
https://m.calcalistech.com/Article.aspx?guid=3914634
Great news about DHL moving this forwards…
Zero release a new bike on the 13th of this month. Press are speculating it’s looking different to current offerings and not just a new paint job… could be interesting for us.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/electrek.co/2021/07/02/zero-has-a-new-electric-motorcycle-model-coming-and-heres-the-first-image/amp/
The winning product will be used in a pilot with a DHL customer….
The Ottogee offering is quite different to Lokies, aimed more at monitoring of staff by the look of it through wearables.
Box lock is similar to Lokies, utilising Barcodes on packages to open the lock..looks to be expensive though at $39-49 per month per device…
Will be interesting to see how Lokies fairs and if they have a specific customer use case… they are all different, so have different advantages depending on the scenario. Fingers crossed..
Zero currently have around 300 dealers. 200 in the USA, and around 100 in Europe.
What I find interesting about the new trademark bikes is as follows..
Currently the only bikes that use Star‘S tech are those that are connected via Zeros trademarked Cypher III Sysyem. This utilises the ‘Next Gen’ app, you can download this on both android and Apple. The Kylos IoT system that Star supplies, feeds all the telematics to be controlled via the next gen app. Also over the air filmwear updates can also take place with this IoT system, no need to go to a dealer. Zero know exactly how a bike is used/abused by the user, essential data for warranty and service demands and can check faults remotely. The zero SRF and SRS, premium bikes that retail at $20k are the only bikes that use Cypher III currently. But they are also the only ‘new platform’ bikes that have been launched by Zero since the collaboration with Star was annouced.
These new bikes, that have just been trademarked (FX/E and SR/X), are potentially the game changer we have been waiting for with the Zero /Star collaboration.
The BoD have said in recent interviews that they expect the supply to Zero to be a low contributor initially, but they have also said that they expect the volume to increase to much higher levels in the near term. The high ticket SRF and SRS sell in the 1000’s. However one of the trademarked acronyms is the FX/E. Have a look at the Zero website and you can see that the FX range of bikes start for as little as $8995. The FX/E that has just been trademarked is of particular interest. There is as a Zero CEO interview where he states they would like to target the high volume sub $7k market (city bikes). This IMO is a bike that would like sell in the 10’s of thousands.
Back in Feb this year Star RNS’D a ‘Statement of Work‘, that Zero had requested, the RNS here stayed the following....
Whilst the quantities of motorcycles incorporating the Company's Helios units sold by Zero to date remains low, Zero has indicated to Starcom that it anticipates a significant increase in demand for the motorcycles in 2020.
So why did Zero ask Starcom to carry out this statement of work? The rns also states...
The Board of Starcom believes that this SOW demonstrates the increased level of collaboration between the two companies, as well as Zero's commitment to utilising Starcom's solution.
Which indicates that more of the Zero range will incorporate Star tech and Cypher III.
If the FX/E is incorporated with the Cyper III, and priced at sub $7k then happy days for Star. The E could well stand for ‘Entry’ and be the type of city bike that the market is graving in the current climate.
Finally, historically Zero tend to launch their bikes for the following year (2021) around September/October, so potentially not long at all for us to find out, after all the RNS did say that 2020 would see a substantial increase in sales...
GLA
Cropx sell & supply this on a HAAS model (Hardware As A Service) the cost per unit is circa $25-30 per month which includes everything including connection to the cloud (the old CropX website , approx 18 months ago, had this figure on, but it could’ve altered since). I agree with Hunky’s $2-3 estimate on the SAAS contribution that Star will get out of that $20-30 per month. There is no upfront cost at all to the farmer, just the monthly (so similar to a phone contract). They claim that farmers will be saving money from day one, due to the water reductions, and increased crop yield. In theory it should be a very easy sell. How many iPhones would be sold if you had to buy the unit upfront,
I really can see cropX being the making of Star
Looks like two more bikes could be close to launch in the near future.
The press are speculating as to what the bikes may be, but based on our Zero update RNS in Feb this year, we could well be there involved with the Cypher III on these bikes too. The final sentence in that RNS says...’The board of Starcom believe the SOW demonstrates the increased level of collaboration between the two companies, as well as Zero’s commitment to utilising Starcom’s tech’
Utilising Starcom’s tech.. could the SOW be for these new bikes??
What’s particularly interesting is that the FX range of bikes, is currently Zero’s entry level bike. There is a CEO interview out there, where he states that they plan to release a sub $7k high volume bike. Perhaps this is it. Also worth noting that the Star BoD have stated that they expected the levels of business to be low initially, but grow quickly. A low price, high volume bike would be the catalyst to that.
Hunky.... All speculation I know, but that’s what shares are all about....
https://www.visordown.com/news/new-bikes/zero-motorcycles-charges-trademarks-teasing-two-new-models
The EU looks to be accelerating its adoption of digital technology to aid recovery in agriculture over the Covid situation.
They are looking to invest £35 billion over the next 2 years purely on Agtech digitisation. There are various EU studies going back to 2016 where connected sensors in the soil have been trialed. CropX are in a prime position to facilitate this digital agtech move, Especially with their HAAS model.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/covid-19-crisis-could-kick-off-digital-revolution-in-agriculture/