Forum Topics AIM AIM CEO Interview

Pinned straw:

Added a month ago

Firstly, apologies for the effusive flattery and praise towards Tony on my part during the interview. Very poor form, and not the kind of neutral, objective style that best serves your interests. So please keep my bias in mind, and be sure to push back in any areas that are warranted.

I just give a lot of credit to a business leader than can deliberately disrupt their own business when the structural winds of change are blowing, especially when such a move will hit revenues and free cash flows in the interim, and also when the payoff for the pivot and associated investments are uncertain.

Also, and Tony himself made this point, it's noteworthy that he's been pretty consistent in what he has said previously, and what he has delivered. That's not too common on the ASX, so credit where it is due.

Anyway, I wont rehash some of the key observations with this business. They've been made before (see past interviews and the company page).

A few of the key points from this discussion:

  • R&D and product development is largely complete. They are now firmly focused on the ongoing commercialization of the product.
  • No acquisitions are on the radar, and in fact Tony was very forthright on this.
  • Their partner sales model will allow them to grow much faster and much cheaper than any direct sales model, and speed is critical given the land grab that is underway
  • Voice is a far larger market than text (transcription), about 30x larger, which is a big part of how they arrive at their ambitious FY29 targets.
  • They have some impressive directors on the board, which should not only add great experience, but also open doors.
  • Looks like a NASDAQ listing is on the radar, and they have been moving towards this for some time. Most of their business is there and they have been presenting their accounts in a US friendly manner for this exact reason.
  • AI adoption in live translation has hit an inflection point -- “voice is where text was 23 months ago.”
  • ASX liquidity has significantly improved. This is interesting only in the sense that it puts AIM in play for larger institutional investors.


It feels like there's a lot of upside if the company can indeed deliver on their FY29 targets. But let's say they only get halfway there ($30m in EBITDA, or lets call it $15m NPAT) at a PE of 20, that's a market cap of $300m, compared with $180m today. Not a terrible margin of safety.

[Held]

AIM transcript.pdf

twee
Added a month ago

Thanks for the interview strawman. This was one of the reasons I joined strawman, getting some questions on AIM answered (top 3 position for me) so thanks.

My takeaways were that:

  • LEXI AI is confirmed to do video search and is narrower in scope than I thought (a good thing and more achievable)
  • Pleased to see that culture/alignment of staff is top of mind
  • Downplay of FY26 results (aligns with mine and others valuation guesses)
  • LEXI voice still big uncertainty, investment in customer acquisition required
  • Timing of the focus on investor relations still doesn't make sense to me but the theory that it was about raising capital for acquisition was quashed when he said no acquisitions (different to earlier comments)
  • Focus on upping liquidity now still strange to me even after explaination


If voice doesn't work, you can bet a new plan will be rolled out before it is clear that is not working, Tony is a fast mover. Must keep a clear thesis to not be too swept up in Tony's enthusiasm.

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Schwerms
Added a month ago

Thing is with the raise they always quash any ideas before they randomly do one.. fresh off one of those little tricks.

It would be nice if he's telling the truth. I've got a lot of faith in T-bone he's seems to be all over it.

Also on the IR push his daily liquidity has really dropped back as well, down to 450k / day over last 30.

I do appreciate the push to get the clear story out with what's going on and I'd prefer more communication over radio silence, appreciate that he always is happy to take the time to talk with us.

Disc Held IRL and SM

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SayWhatAgain
Added a month ago

You did well @Strawman, thank you for the meeting! Certainly with Tony, you didnt get a much of a word in… ha ha ha Good of him to make the time and to be so open with our community though. Was great to see the hardware and to hear about what’s ahead for AIM and us investors:)

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jcmleng
Added a month ago

Discl: Held IRL 4.96% and in SM

Great summaries of the meeting and a great meeting - (original smart arse comment on @Strawman- deleted - ) ...!

I took away additional points in 2 areas, both subtle, but adds to my high conviction on AIM:

Encoders

The show-and-tell of the encoders was a huge bonus.

  • The job of the encoder is to (1) stop 99% of the bandwidth from flowing through (2) let through the isolated and uncompressed audio (3) strip out the background noise, so that the translation and captioning can be done on the most precise and cleanest voice signal - If we get the crowd noise, makes it more difficult to caption and translate
  • When you are doing live, if you are closest to the source, you can deliver things the quickest
  • Brand new Lexi Voice encoder, to be launched in April 2026, specifically for Lexi Voice, can do 4 channels of Lexi Voice at once - a more premium product, can do 5 different language inputs, English being the 6th input - say for the UN, 6 UN languages, 1 box - this is to “embed the brand new service”
  • "English to Spanish latency is now 5 seconds, from 8 seconds, BEFORE the Lexi Voice encoders" - very positive technical news


This increased understanding of the encoders and the launch of a souped up Lexi Voice encoder gives me increased technical confidence that latency improvements are possible, further tightening the technical moat.

Company Culture

  • From an IT organisation perspective, I appreciated the 3 key company values and the order in which they are stated - (1) Truth (2) Precision (3) Accountability - you always want these 3 values but it takes a lot to embed this culture, especially “Truth”.
  • “Commitment to meeting the customers on their own time zone” - no question, Tony is on to this like his life depended on it.


This augurs well from an investor standpoint as Tony will no doubt hold himself to this same standard when dealing externally.

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Silky84
Added a month ago

Tony undoubtedly has an infectious and enthused style but also plenty of skin in the game and seemingly endless commitment to the cause.

With these kind of people its important to always check that they execute on the things they say- i think Tony has done that well to date. Im backing him to grow this company and its my largest real life position and looking to add more over the next 12 months (i still think a pull back is possible given FY26 revenues are likely to fall and lexi voice revenue is unlikely to be meaningful until FY27)

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