Member Info for LawrenceHut

my impression after going through the report but without digging that deep:

it's a ****show, no other word comes to mind, regarding margins and ebitda.

note that i don't think the company is doing so badly, but what's terrible is management promising positive runrate ebitda and no further capital raise only a few months ago, and now this. margins even went down. i didn't think they'd be so bad. admin expenses went even higher, contrary to what was suggested in the reports. sales numbers are exactly what i expected.

craig is overly promotional and he does not inform shareholders accurately. i understand that as a ceo, he has to be optimistic, but this is way beyond that, in my opinion. remember the £7.5m of february 13? look where we are. some people bought at nearly 40p per share after reading that. outrageous.

having said that, there are positive points.

ondo remains about cashflow breakeven in the first year (and then positive). assuming this is true, that means growth is self-financed. just about. although again, take that with a pinch of salt.

indiana farm bureau insurance is investing in ondo, £750, or about $1m. that's a pretty good sign that the value proposition is valid. plus them declaring they want 15% penetration in 2026. not sure how many of their clients are homeowners. this, i don't think craig can "overpromise", to be civil, because ifb insurance would tell him off. ifb being only in indiana also means that all customers will be fairly concentrated, costs per customers should go down as plumbers travel less, and margins should go up.

liberty mutual being our first client is also a good thing. they are big. may they grow their base faster and faster.

leakbot edge being tech-ready is good. i don't get why a company like ondo needs more than a year to figure out design, but well. early 2027 probably means h2 2027. sorry, once bitten, twice shy. and i was already shy.

good company, great value proposition, win-win-win, momentum not amazing but ok, but please someone tell craig to stop overpromising to the point that some could see it as deception.

i still need to redo my models with lower margins though.

OK, I was too optimistic.

Oh, and agreed we most likely don't run out of cash/don't need another raise.

It will more depend on contracted revenue than EBITDA, and we don't really know how much they got paid in 12-month prepayments; we'll have an idea looking at CF and Deferred revenue.

7am tomorrow? Would it not be in the evening, and Thursday morning for the call?

I don't think we are at 200K yet, or maybe just about. As you said, it was 185K in Sept, maybe 187K by end of Sept.

If we added 7K per month (I think it was less), that's 201K.

210K would be amazing. >10K/month. Or maybe the 185K was lowballed.

I still don't see how runrate EBITDA can be positive by March; I wish someone had explained that to me. Well, hopefully I'm wrong and we'll see that tomorrow.

AI would not make mistakes like writing "I am scientist".

badtrader99, you really need to read my comments if you think it's mainly negative with no value. In fact, I specifically ask the opinion on other people on runrate ebitda in March. I WANT people to tell me what I'm missing. Instead of contributing, you whinged.

Anyways, I'll stop commenting on that, whinge all you want, cheer for Ondo without trying to understand the company or help others do it.

Meanwhile, I'll focus on the latter.

I am scientist, I care about data and arguments more than about who speaks; I could be talking to a talking to a 12-year-old girl for all I care, if she has good insights and arguments, that's what I'm looking for.

Insights I don't have, data I haven't seen, interpretations I have not considered, overlooked, missed, mistakes I made.

I've had many a stranger saving me/making me a lot of money by correcting errors I made, or by making me see things I hadn't. And I don't care that they were strangers.

I hope then when the results come out, at least one or two people here will be interested in looking into what it means for the company, where it's at, where it's going, what the strengths and weaknesses are, etc.

Andii, I explained: I didn't changed my mind, I sold part of my holding, and I'm holding the rest.

You are capable of not being in bad faith.

Canowhoopass, I'm doing the opposite of trying to manipulate the stock price: I'm trying to go deep into the mechanics of the company in public, so that as many shareholders as possible understand it.

Now I identify a risk, and I see too many "investors" are just speculators who would rather stay in a bubble that discuss the ins and outs of the company, and who shut their ears and label anybody with the slightest nuance with various unpleasant names. So I reduce my exposure. Fan boys are known to have tantrums and create volatility.

Good luck to you; with this attitude, you will need it.

Canowhoopass, I sold some of my position today because I think chances are high that investors will be disappointed during the call, and I'm hoping to buy more shares at a lower price. I'm a bit greedy. So I'm transparent indeed, as badtrader99 said.

Obviously Kapitalforeningen Wealth Invest's investment is not helping my case. He's a renowned investor and although it was known that he was interested in Ondo, it certainly constitutes a strong validation of the thesis.

Also, Craig might announce some exciting news, like a planned roll out with Nationwide

Maybe they registered more contracts than I think and CF will be high, or maybe I'm wrong on the numbers since Sep 22.

My position is still a medium position, so maybe I'll miss a bit of the upside. But I doubt the share price will double overnight, and it might go down dramatically like last year.

Still very much long in the long term, for reasons explained many times. Just adapting my sizing to my interpretation of where the company is. They might not be positive in terms of runrate ebitda or even CF, but they certainly will be during FY2027. And one day, they will be a big company, most likely.

Canowhoopass, this attitude can make you lose a lot of money, especially if you think, despite all I wrote in great details, that I'm here to badmouth the company. Don't fall in love with a company. Analyze it, understand it, adapt your investment. Your money is the result of strong efforts, presumably, take care of it, it's important and you deserve it.

What do you mean by not enough plumbers?

Not enough in general or in Ondo?

Would it take very long to train new (experienced) plumbers to be leak detectives and repairmen?

Excellent points! That's also why find & fix is great: very little admin work for the insurance company.

I note that he mentions shutoff valves. I wonder whether Ondo should not develop (or buy a company that already has developped) a device combined with a shutoff valve for high-value houses. If anything, to show that ROI is only better for those specific cases.

You'd get the most sensitive sensor on the market combined with a shutoff valve as a last resort mechanism. But maybe it's not worth the hassle/cost of developing/buying it...

Andii, I hadn't missed it, that's why I took $100K for the example. Just trying to confirm it with the LinkedIn data. Always good to double check assumptions, see if they are more or less in the right ballpark.

Yes, that's from where that I got 49 employees; I assume operations is mostly plumbers as well, and maybe some plumber managers, and maybe someone receiving calls?

I assume Technology is app development and maintenant, R&D, etc.?

I meant that many started in FY2025 (from April 2024 to March 2025 included).

You need to add a few bits to that, to get the cost from the point of view of the employer (insurance, taxes, benefits, etc.).

In the last report, staff costs were £3061K, minus 641K for directors, that £2420K for 49 employees. But obviously, many started in 2025, so it's hard to know even what an average pay is. As we get more numbers from more semesters, we'll be able to have a good idea.

I also found that in the report:

"The LeakBot claims mitigation system incorporates a plumbing repair service. The provision of that service is dependent on securing either directly hired or third party, outsourced plumbers, which can be subject to variable availability and cost depending on location."

So they might have some outsourced plumbers. I think in some video, I heard Craig say they are in-house. But sometimes he contradicts himself a bit...

Nice LinkedIn post. They are still looking for new partners. Good. Penetration is probably more important, but as someone said earlier, each new partner might create some FOMO and motivate existing partners to try harder to place their Leakbot into their customer's homes.

Thanks, Andii.

$90–150K seems to be a good ballpark then.

I found*

and I just realised it's the same job offer as one that was on Indeed a while ago. I guess they haven't found their plumber yet...

I find a new job offer: https://www.talent.com/view?id=a58fae298c76.

Interestingly:

"Geographic location Based in the State of Massachusetts, but will be required to work in other areas across the US from time to time including Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire & Maine."

and later:

"Are you happy to travel throughout the state of Massachusetts to attend customer visits?"

So yeah, plumbers do travel quite a bit. as Ondo grows in the US, each plumber will travel less and will be able to spend more time finding & fixing and less time on the road.

And considering the conditions, cost for Ondo is about $120–160K. Interesting data point.

From Dowgate (apparently) : The Ondo/NW partnership started with a 6k-unit pilot in Ohio. In Nov24 a second order added 15 new states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, Idaho, Kentucky, Indiana, Vermont, Oregon, Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois, New Hampshire, and

Washington State; which required significant growth of LeakBot’s engineer team. A year later, the success of that second tranche has led

to this further expansion to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, Michigan, Utah, Missouri, Iowa, Rhode Island, New Jersey and DC.

This is good.

Nationwide hasn't updated its information to agents. I'm looking forward to seeing in which states Ondo will be expanding.

I guess NE and/or the Great Lakes region.

Thanks for the link.

The graph is what I tried to explain in the "Snowball Effect" discussion.

Note I did make an embarrassingly bad mistake : $30 devices for 10K clients is $300K not $30K (also, only 2 x 3 months of salary would be expensed as the devices were only used for 3 months on average in my example). So they'd "lose" a lot of money in the first year in my example.

In the graph, what they say is that for an order of 10K devices, the insurers pays 1 year for all of them within 30 days. So $600K goes to Ondo and it appears in the balance sheet as cash in current assets as "deferred revenue" inside "trade and other payables" (note 18) in current liabilities.

For the first 12 months of each device, Ondo will provide the service (app + find & fix) without receiving cash (it already received it), but it records a $5 revenue every month in the income statement, and the deferred revenue line of the balance sheet goes down by $5 (the deferred revenue is the red thing in the graph).

The 10K devices are not installed immediately, so it can spread a bit: in the graph, they give an example where it takes 4 months for the insurer to get all the Leakbots registered, so the deferred revenue is "consumed" over 14 months (once 12 x 10K = 120K months of service were given by Ondo).

When the Leakbot is sent to the client (I think, but maybe it's when it's registered), the expense of the Leakbot is recognized in the income statement.

And that's why margins are compressed: the whole Leakbot expense is recognized immediately, when revenue is recognized over time. A leakbot that was registered on the 31 st of March will have an expense of $30 but revenue of 0, so infinite negative margin!

I think it's really beautiful because they are probably cash flow positive nearly all along, even though margins look depressed. And people who don't understand this think Ondo loses more money that it actually does.

If you don't get it, don't hesitate to ask, it took me a while to fully grasp it. But it's really worth understanding it!