This was a more upbeat AGM than the last one.

If FY25 was a transition year with revenue and profit getting smashed as inventory washed through customers working capital, FY26 will be another transition year but of a different sort.

CEO Aidan was a lot more positive than on recent earnings calls. He’s lost that haunted look, seemed a lot more relaxed and was laughing and joking with members of the audience at times.

The new chair Alison Ledger seems like a safe pair of hands - was matter of fact, upbeat and on message.

Iris + Q-SYS = ?

Audinate have a lot of execution ahead of them to launch and then integrate the early stage Iris business, onboard the Q-SYS team and get back to growth.

It’s not clear how Iris will integrate but it looks like an impressive piece of the puzzle.

OEM’s seem to love it (free for them – 1m units in the market already), as do end users (anecdotally).

Not sure how much end users are prepared to pay for it yet though, as the official launch is due this quarter (was last month but running late or was delayed).

The Q-SYS team are apparently veterans in this space who have done this sort of thing before so a big vote of confidence that they are joining Audinate to launch their AV platform.

Investing in an unknowable future

Last year Audinate were looking at a cyclical trough that required multiple downgrades and a cost cutting exercise.

This year they are still rebuilding their revenues but have invested in new tech (M&A) and a new team (Ex-Q-SYS) to build out their platform.

This won’t be quick, easy or cheap and the results are uncertain but they can’t not do it really.

The platform piece – sitting on top of the 3 legged stool of Audio, Video & Control (CEO’s metaphor, not mine) is where they convert to a subscription based SaaS business.

This does not feel imminent but is the north star they are heading for.

All this investment will keep them loss making and burning cash in FY26.

That will probably displease the market, who seem to be in “show me” mode with this business.

I much prefer this level of confident, considered investment to when they were cutting costs in FY25 to stem the flow of losses.

Video killed the Audio star?

Video market remains highly fragmented, is different to audio (stemming from the need for compression) and is no doubt harder than they through it would be.

I recall, years ago when heading into video Aidan saying he was going to break down the walled gardens in Video they same way he’d done it in audio.

These days the walled gardens seem to still be springing up and harder to tear down.

This makes some sense as vertically integrated OEMs are trying to differentiate and cross sell their products, so having their own brand-specific platform helps differentiate / value add.

There’s also the recently launched Open AV - https://www.openav.cloud/ which at a glance looks like an attempt at a Bluetooth Style Industry / Syndicate Owned Control Layer – “interoperable, and a customer-first AV ecosystem”.

One of the risks with Audinate is that they plow Audio Profits into the Video land grab but are unsuccessful in unifying AV over IP. If so, they'll burn a lot of capital along the way.

Same old problems?

Afterwards, I had a chat to one of the other co-founders who exited (was exited from) the business 7 years ago.

He marvelled at how they were still wrestling with the same problems that they had when he was there (maybe if he’d stayed they’d be solved by now? Hopefully just a bag of grapefruit / case of sour grapes?)

Lingering optimism

To be optimistic on this you need to think their recent investments in tech and people are the right ones.

That’s how it all looks to me at this stage but there’s still a way to go and things can definitely go wrong along the way (again).

The Iris launch will be one to track.

If this gains strong traction with end users, it could really speed up Dante Video adoption and they’ll be off to the races.

Disc: Held