Member Info for sweepydog2

The BoDs policy now is that announcing wins other than the big ones will discourage large potential users because it highlights that BIRD is small. The consequence is that there have been no announcements since 16/12/2021 but there may have been wins constituting less than 10% of turnover (anything more would require an RNS) or there may have been none. It didn't discourage the US State Dept or the large NY news business in previous years when BIRD was smaller.

1 seller 12 buyers do not make a revival if 11 of the buyers together don't match the seller. We will have to wait on what happens at NAB to get any sense of what BIRD is likely to achieve in the rest of the year.

JH for President (Chair) and at least one US national with a real track record of achievement to give the business more credibility on that side of the Pond.

The continued fall in the SP is, in the absence of any bad news, likely be caused by the over 4 mths with no news of actual sales wins. BIRD got its rating because it was thought to have unique technology with a worldwide market. It offered significant cost savings, a quick way to Cloud use, and impressive CO2 reductions. All of these should have caused a stampede of customers to their door. Yet in the year to date the BoD has not felt that even one win merited a mention. That alone will have discouraged new investors and those who paid 28p in the last placing are likely to be feeling disenchanted and may well be consistent sellers as the SP underperforms by a wide margin. Unless this is remedied shortly IS can be expected to demand changes to the BoD. Only SBS, IM, SW and JH look to be reasonably safe from a restructuring. The others will be vulnerable to replacement by NEDs who have a track record of getting results.

I think it was 3% of the placing but that's well short of the total shares in issue.

I doubt that the operating costs can be lowered very much if at all since they are consistently making a clear 90% margin. The licensing move will enable businesses to move quickly to becoming truly Cloud Native with the cost savings and CO2 reduction that will enable. In answer to a question specifically on this SS said that at least one major player would find it very difficult to move to the Cloud even if it threw a vast amount of money at it over an extended period because its own technology was the obstacle. He could also have said that by the careful use of patents he has closed off all of the easy routes to compete with BIRD and more patents are in the pipeline. The announcement of a US based Presentation later this month by IM suggests they have at least one and possibly more surprises to sweeten the US investor market. Once the message gets through the shares will be re-rated to reflect that the software is becoming the world standard and that has significant favourable financial consequences for existing shareholders.

I think that a sale by directors is a long way off. In a recent interview IM referred to BIRD being like Acorn Computers that transformed itself to ARM and that transition is beginning to happen now.

It's not so much the absolute recent figures but the trend. On almost every measure BIRD has taken a step backwards when they should be expanding rapidly. The BoD should have known that the figures were likely to disappoint and taken steps to manage this. They did nothing. Elsewhere I have seen calls for the Chairman and another to consider their position. I think that understates the need for a restructuring of the Board. All appointments pre Mr McDonagh now need to be reconsidered and my own view is that any previous appointments need to be terminated forthwith. They may have been good people in an early stage or private company but today's shambles shows they are not up to the job in a growing public company. An NED is all about anticipating the unexpected, asking difficult questions and refusing to be palmed off. Questions should be asked at the presentation because this could well happen again unless there are changes.

If I remember correctly in an interview some 3 years ago IM said that he was not looking to compete directly with AVID just to do the basics. Now BIRD does a lot of what AVID does with an AVID keyboard and 90% margin. Their customer list is the best advert they have. They could easily become the software of choice just like in the early days when nobody bought a PC from anybody but IBM.

It certainly is odd that so little is being said about it. Even Adrian Pennington, a journalist who seems to follow BIRD, has not mentioned it. It could be as has been suggested that they feared it had leaked and they want to make the fuss on 13/09

I had a email from BB this a. m. giving details of the deal.

It looks like the fall back from 40p is going to continue until the market has some positive news of large paying customers. The BoD need at very least to indicate what they already know about H1 - its ridiculous that a small company takes over 10 weeks to brief the market when companies turning over £100M plus can do it in 3. What exactly does the CFO do with his day?

Is it my imagination or is the share price history showing 2 of everything? Is it an attempt to bolster the OTC market?

Disney already know about BIRD or they should - they own half of A+E Networks which landed and expanded with BIRD. Amazon is helping BIRD with their Public Cloud offering due later this year. Google have also met them. But as IM said recently whilst BIRD can react very quickly big corporations have lawyers and other advisers so it takes a lot longer to do a deal with them.

I'm not sure BPR is lost for holdings acquired and and continued to be held on AIM. "Trading on the US OTC market will have no impact on the trading of Blackbird’s existing ordinary shares on AIM and no new ordinary shares will be issued as part of the cross-trade" suggests that the two markets are entirely separate and there will be no intermeddling of the shares.

It looks like relief may not be due on OTC holdings but it depends whether HMRC regard it as a recognised exchange.

Don't confuse this one with Athletes Unlimited Inc which has been around in the US for at least 25 years+ and is a charity for people with disabilities who want to get engaged in sports. This one was founded in 2018.

We know, because IM said so, that they are negotiating a licencing deal and there are several other negotiations that are near being concluded. JH said there were exciting things ahead. So it just needs patience - a lot of it possibly - before we see a hike in the SP.

What did the SP open at today? Down 0.5p. It always falls on good news but luckily the Market doesn't appear to know about the Softbank connection or it could have been -5p

Even if IM and SBS would sell at £1 (and I don't think for a moment that price is anywhere near tempting them) the IS will be looking for a lot more than that and without them on board for any deal there can be no sale. IM said that he was looking at winning 10% of the market as a minimum target and since then the sector for the product has both expanded and grown - one recent estimate was that it could be worth £6BN. 10% of that would be £600M and at the price multiple of 40 which was used by Stephen White (COO & CFO) would give a capital value of £24BN or in excess of £71 a share. Even cutting the expected sector size and growth I don't believe a figure of less than £10 a share would get the majority of long term shareholders to the table for discussions. Google paid £1.4BN a couple of years ago for an idea without even a product whereas BIRD has a working patented product with blue chip users who sing its praises. We have quite a trip ahead to get there but JH did say only a few days ago that there were exciting times ahead and as a non exec director he should know.

RNS Blackbird has won 18 more US TV Stations which will be taking digital news production following TownNews' latest deployment. This is the fifth expansion of Blackbird by TownNews since the partnership began in 2018.

69 US TV stations now use Blackbird remotely and safely to rapidly access, edit and publish news content fast to social and web platforms. When paired with TownNews' Field59 VMS, news stories can be delivered to viewers with unbeatable speed and control using Blackbird's browser-based, carbon efficient cloud native video editing platform. US TV stations using Blackbird now span 35 states.
latest deployment. This is the fifth expansion of Blackbird by TownNews since the partnership began in 2018.

69 US TV stations now use Blackbird remotely and safely to rapidly access, edit and publish news content fast to social and web platforms. When paired with TownNews' Field59 VMS, news stories can be delivered to viewers with unbeatable speed and control using Blackbird's browser-based, carbon efficient cloud native video editing platform. US TV stations using Blackbird now span 35 states.