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In March last year it was estimated that YouTube had 15m video content creators. If it became easier to use they would put themselves way out in front.

The Allenby Model assumes a revenue per customer of $23 a month for 2 years on which net of 30% expenses yields an income of $19.3M a year from 100,000 paying customers i.e. 5.25c a share. Even at half of what the model suggests the price will not be around 7p as it is now.

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.

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.

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.

I got the impression from listening to Sumit and Mo that they had spent a lot of time and effort on what is now elevate.io before they approached BIRD. They chose BIRD because it could deliver what they wanted the product to offer. So BIRD is basically providing the conduit rather than the bells and whistles. These guys have a track record, they know how to deliver and they already had a good idea of what the end customers would like to have from their contacts. I have a vague recall that they know significant influencers and if so that could cause the adoption of elevate.io to snowball very quickly.

The AIM Rule 26 information published by BIRD shows:

Ian McDonough (including family interests) 27,786,159 7.54%

The figures quoted previously exclude family interests.

Looks like the Summer Olympics as it was announced by RNS Reach not a full RNS (which it would have to be if it was thought to be price sensitive).

Just noticed that the BIRD logo has changed. It looks like they must have bought the right to use it from an Etsy user. It's certainly not as distinctive as its predecessor so perhaps they want to lower their profile?

At the moment Trading View is showing a summary of Indicators: Oscillators: Neutral, Moving Averages: Strong Buy. The main criticism of this approach is that it is entirely based in the past and takes no account of the likely future or the known unknowns like more PBB wins or the Prosumer product taking off even more explosively than is currently thought possible. Consequently with no hard news the SP can become exceptionally volatile.

What is the reason for the substantial rise? BIRD has said nothing and a quick trawl around their customers and Tech Partners is equally silent. Without some underlying reason any price rise is likely to be vulnerable. Perhaps there has been a leak regarding the Prosumer product which was due to be launched in Q4? BIRD do not currently have their own stand at IBC although they may be relying on their links with AWS or MSFT to launch it.

Tomorrow morning could see one or more of a number of posts by BIRD:

1) "The company knows of no reason that would have sparked the sharp rise in its share price except the volume of buyers"

2) "The company is in talks which may lead to an announcement about a further PBR contract"

3. "The company has received an approach from a third party"

4. The company has commenced Beta trials of its Prosumer Product and initial results are encouraging"

Then again they may say nothing as they have done since 16/12/2021.

With a history of 23 years of trading losses and negative cashflow from trading it's hard to argue that BIRD is at the moment a success. The new Prosumer product may be the turning point and if it is as good as the publicity to date suggests it could turn things around quite speedily.

The news that AVID has put itself up for sale may give BIRD some opportunities.

Many of AVIDs contracts will be for several years or more. But almost certainly they will have service level clauses enabling the customer to walk away if the service falls below standard. So a buyers ability to strip out costs will be limited but that doesn't mean they won't try. By definition longer term contracts are likely to be with bigger customers so any fall out will be attractive to BIRD who offer the advantages of being genuinely Cloud Native and AVID user friendly.

The fact that no deals have been published simply reflects the decision (wrong in my opinion) that publicizing any deal other than very large ones i.e. those that have by LSE rules to be subject of an RNS highlights that BIRD is a small company. Anybody can look up BIRDs position in a couple of minutes.

The decision to cut staff is always difficult but it does at least suggest that they are focused on stopping unnecessary expense and getting to cash break even and profits. If Rai and Volans really can deliver the goods starting in Q4 the transformation from lame duck to unicorn could happen very quickly - the margins currently are well over 90% and even with the cost of add ons it will still be very high. The one unknown is how quickly paying customers can be won for the Prosumer product. Figures of $150 a subscription a year and 10,000 users a month have been bandied around though I'm not sure whether for the right product that the user figure is too high or much too low. If the figure is right and 120,000 users can be added and retained in a year it suggests income of well over $20M a year is possible in a large market which is forecast to grow quickly. Earnings of 5p a share would certainly push the SP higher than now.

He's now got over 500K so yesterday's fall cost him about £10K. He might have bought more and now only SBS and IM have more amongst the directors.

Good News. 7 sales. 0 purchases. Share price up 2.68%. A truly weird share.

The market response is understandable. IM increased expectations when he said an announcement could be made by the end of H1. When it wasn't it became the end of H2. Now it looks like 2023. BIRD has a history which is not good (primarily because it was ahead of where the market was) and any deferral brings those memories back. What I do find difficult to believe is that Premier Miton (invested first in 2014) and the others are still there with very substantial holdings. They must really believe that BIRD will be an El Dorado of a share very soon so it's time for private investors to show patience rather than bailing out.

The problem is that like the 2 EVS postings what has been published about what Apple is doing has no mention of BIRD. Yet one of the main benefits of a licence deal apart from income was the identification of Bird and none of the big deals announced so far names them. The company itself has cut off any flow of news (has any other LSE quoted company ever adopted such a policy and gone on to succeed?). If what is inferred is true 2023 may look better but 2022 is likely to disappoint as TownsNews is known to have lost a major customer.

The results were undoubtedly the best that BIRD has posted for the first 6 mths trading of any year and there seems to be a lot of good news to come. They were asked, however, about breaking even and profits. Their answer was that they had enough cash to see the company through to profits/positive cash flow for the original core business. Given the rate of cash burn in recent years that seems to suggest 2 to 3 years. The inevitable conclusion is that new applications and products will need a cash call if the business is not itself cash generative by then.