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I'm pretty sure the financial bods at Vodafone have structured the loan in a manner that is favorable to them and not necessarily OUT. Could be a very low risk approach especially if it is secured against something tangible. Why would they bother? At a guess to meet their own backed-off contract obligations in the easiest & cheapest possible manner. What Vodafone haven't done is purchased a sizable stake, nor have we seen any director dealing. With the share price at such a low would this not be the ideal time to buy if you believed in the value.....
Any partner can apply for Cloud OS Network - you will see that most of the UK leading partners don't bother as it doesn't add any value. CIF is a membership organisation - you pay to become a member. Value of O-Cloud is massively diminished with both AWS and Microsoft launching UK data centers this year. When you see the likes of HP pulling out of public cloud as they lack the scale of the big 4 it's easy to see why OUT struggle to break even, let alone make profit.
If OUT were to be delisted (and that looks like quite a possibility) where does that leave the shareholders? Could this end up like Metnor Group with no market to trade and a poor bargain matching service?
Got to love the broker ratings. Investec giving nothing but BUY ratings all the way from target £1.76, £1.36, £0.71, £0.60 and £0.33. Now sitting at just over 4p (no doubt will be reiterating their buy rating) Funny how anyone rating this as a BUY has nothing to back it up with. Think the only people making money out of this are execs and MMs.
Avanade (£15M net profit 2014) : https://www.avanade.com/en-gb/solutions/cloud/unified-communications-and-collaboration Arkadin (£1M net profit 2014) : https://www.arkadin.co.uk/services/unified-communications Content and Code : https://www.contentandcode.com/services/unified-communications/ Just some of the leaders in this space that OUT is trying to operate in. Reselling and integrating Skype for Business doesn't require big investments - OUT got it wrong when they bet big on IAAS and UK Cloud and are paying the price. Would be better tearing it up and starting again.
Whilst I'm sure there are people desperate to cut there losses on this free falling stock, what is the point of numerous posts with links to marketing fluff - what is needed are answers to: How is the dire financial situation going to change - Skype for Business is not the answer - there are already numerous SIs without the baggage who are profitable - the business model for cloud hosting and public sector has been shot to pieces but what is going to fill the void? Why is the excessive executive pay tolerated on such disastrous performance? Technology moves too quickly for this to be a long term bet - so what is NAV on this and in a distressed sale what is likely to be the discount, and what does that mean for the share price? Roughly 50% lower than todays price I would think.
Given Skype for Business is now the main (or only) offering from OUT you would expect to see them listed on Microsoft's partner page (http://partnersolutions.skypeforbusiness.com/partners) but it also show who they are up against. OUT lack the alignment of the likes of Risual and the scale of Avenade.
Interesting to see Vicky Ryder - Head of Partner sales has jumped ship. No doubt on the back of the partner channel pulling clients off of what was Rise and into mainstream cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure.
I can't see a long game for this - there is no IP or value proposition. With the likes of HP and Verizon closing their cloud businesses as they aren't profitable, it is difficult to see how Outsourcery will fair any better. With the big vendors bringing UK data centers online this year and MS including Skype for Business on their infrastructure with the E5 SKU, what is it that is on offer that is going to keep them from going under? The RNS re £150k revenue is a joke.