@Shapeshifter One of the small number of covering analysts (I don't know who) hiked their price target from $5.92 to $9.10 in early December. There was also a second significant upwards revision.

Given its illiquidity, this might explain the dramatic SP move - particularly if one or more actors are trying to now build a position - they have to do it gradually for all but the smallest holdings.

According to tradingview.com, the 3 covering analysts have price targets of: $5,91, $8.93, and $9.10, so an average PT of $7.98 is still well above today's close of $6.74.

So there has been a big revision upwards post the AGM, which was held on 22-October. Given the significant delay between the AGM and the hiking of price targets, it is unclear to me that anything was disclosed at the AGM to jusify this move. Certainly, the brief Chairman's statement on the ASX release has the blandest of forward-looking statements for FY25.

That said, FY24 wasn't a great year with "one-off" costs of acquisition, the cyber incident, and investment in the platform to make it global, and the capital raise earlier this year to pay down debt, together with the "noise" around the acquisition bid and the CEO resignation last year (all covered here in detail).

So if these were truly one-offs and the company gets back on its previous growth trajectory, free of distractions, then it does start generating reasonable free cash, and on an EV/EBITDA basis, the valuation can come back into very reasonable territory quite quickly. So perhaps the re-rating is in part due to the company being deemed to be free of the noise of the last 12-15 months, The issues of FY24 meant the SP essentially tracked sideways (down then back up) from late 2023 to late 2024. Perhaps, the believers now see a resumption of clear profit growth from here? Sounds like a reasonable thesis to me.

FWIW, I don't have a view on valuation. I'd like to see more evidence of the quality and strength of growth in Europe, and want to see some more positive reports. It is entirely possible that the market will get ahead of me. But that's the way of the world. I don't have a strong enough conviction to buy today.

Disc: Not Held

Thanks @mikebrisy once again you are articulating my internal thoughts better than I can.

On reflection on your comments it does look like someone, possibly a fund, is trying to build a reasonable position and is battling the wafer thin liquidity.

They wrestle with their conviction and the share price!

Would agree if the European business is concentrated in Germany only.

But I it looks like EOL serves many regions in Europe.

And since I spent some energy moving my gold stock CMM holding to EOL with such low liquidity I'll stay here for now at least for another few months.

Interesting also that EOL and the CMM stock price is almost the same so I'm quite happy for now.

I don't think there was a CEO resignation @mikebrisy, there was a NED (Vaughn Busby) resignation from the failed M&A fallout.

There was also a restructure to 'a more global operating model' - with regional heads (local CEOs?) replaced by Functional heads.

CEO Shaun Ankers still at the helm after 16 years - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaun-ankers-85b9a63b/

Otherwise I agree your thinking and that is largely my thesis for holding this one in size at current prices.

Decks are cleared, smooth sailing ahead...

Disc: Held.

@Slomo thank you for correcting. It was my error - Vaughan Busby was indeed a NED, and was the inaugural CEO at IPO, being succeeded by Shaun Ankers a year or so after the IPO. Good pick-up.

It is also worth pointing out that, even though Vaughan left the board as a result of the deal fallout, he remains the second largest shareholder with 11.67% of SOI. His holding is second only to Ian Ferrier, who was the inaugural chairman, remains a NED, and still holds 16.46%.

Do you know if, in addition to the restructure to a functional, global model, they are also investing in the platform to move the acquired European systems onto a common, architecture, or are they still running distinct Australian and European platforms? (You can tell from this question that I have not been following them too closely - they are only on my "long watch list". While their strong, even dominant, market position in Australia is not in question, Europe has many more actors in the field.So what's been holding me back is evidence of competitive advantage in Europe.)

I hadn't realised Vaughan was the IPO CEO @mikebrisy. Seems a shame he went as part of the M&A stoush - as he was the only board member against it, from what I could tell. And history has been kind to his views at the time.

Re: the restructure(s) I don't know if they are migrating the EUR acquisitions onto a common platform but this is the direction they are moving in generally.

They are trying to present a singular view to the market of their offerings including their (so far unique) follow the sun support model so clients can get 24 hour coverage.

In the HY 24 Report in Feb they said "We (as a company) need to standardise our approaches across our country offices and separate systems."

So I suspect there may be market specific / regulation / compliance requirements that mean they will need some different functionalities in their 'platform' across different geographies.

This could keep systems separate for now and will hopefully not result in a slow build up of tech debt over time.

In the FY 24 Annual Report they said "The Globalisation Project has helped design new business processes that augment business resilience and improve leverage, allowing processes to be managed with improved compliance and automation."

If they are looking to consolidate around one system this might not be top of their list as they are spending big on other initiatives to support scaling up.

I'm pretty happy with this approach as they seem well placed in a land grab for sticky clients who will not want to switch from an ETRM system that their high priced traders are trained up on and trust to manage their risk exposures.

I worked with bond, FX & Derivative (and a handful of commodity) traders for many years and they tend to be creatures of habit bordering on superstitious.

Risk management systems are mission critical for many of the customers that Energy One are trying to win.

The incumbent is usually MS XL which has all kinds of EUC issues and vulnerabilities for use as a ETRM system - especially as businesses grow as these XL based solutions tend not be scalable.

@Slomo this conversation has reminded me it is time to do a deep dive to understand $EOL's organic growth in Europe, given that the last European acquisition Egssis, closed at end of 2021.

I have previously written here that, given the established competition in ETRM system in Europe, I want to understand what kind of European organic growth $EOL can achieve - to indicate competitive advantage of their systems versus the many other offerings in the market.

While they are continuing to build out spot traded market coverage through 2025/26, when 1H 25 reports, we'll have seen 6x reporting periods (6m) of organic growth in Europe, I think. If that looks promising, then with the remaining coverage build-out yet to come, an investment thesis might be supportable (from my perspective).

Time to dig into the details. (Maybe the recent price action indicates others have done this work ahead of me!)