Forum Topics NTO NTO "is it game over for $NTO as a business?"
Solvetheriddle
Added 2 years ago

Hi all @BoredSaint I sat in on this call and make the following points, (disc hold a small speculative position irl, in fact all loss making companies should be speculative at this stage of the cycle). the company is caught in a catch 22 position as i suspect peers are as well, wanting to preserve cash, NTO have reduced headcount including sales. this reduces sales growth. the company chewed through $7m (adj for acq costs) in FH and has $35m cash (all USD). secondly they made a significant acquisition recently and integrating the combined salesforces so they can sell both products is taking time. so large changes in GTM. the revenue guidance was left unchanged but ARR guidance down $66m to $57.5m for Dec year end. indicates less saas sales and more perpetual license etc.

therefore a few things going on, they want to be cashflow breakeven by 2h next year, if i recall correctly. so cutting costs, integrating sales teams and expandng cross ell etc. the US sales team looks like the issue and changes have been made. ADBE and DOCu are the competition. my understanding from various sources is that NTO product is good, but it is a 350ee company up against giants and effective sales is critical. i suspect ADBE arent thinking too much about NTO at this stage and could poach the sales force or mnay other tactics is they felt threatened or buy them. hard to say.

to me the critical issue is getting sales going. i like that they appear not to want to dilute at these prices and are restraining costs but that comes at he cost of strong top line growth at this stage. they are still grwoing. the ceo implied that sales should be firing by Q4 so lets see.

hope this is of soem help

17

BoredSaint
Added 2 years ago

Thanks for this @Solvetheriddle

For me I'm not overly concerned by the decrease in cash receipts compared to Q1. Seems like the same issue occurred in FY21 as well with Q2 receipts lower than Q1. This might be attributed to different billing cycles for their clients.

In regards to selling more perpetual licences, just looking at the Nitro website, it seems if you want just the PDF software, there is no possibility for a subscription. The only option is a one time licence fee (US$229.67). I'm pretty sure this has changed from the past because I remember comparing between Nitro and Adobe Acrobat and both offered a subscription model for just the PDF software with Nitro being slightly cheaper than Acrobat.

@Strawman are we able to get CEO Sam Chandler to speak to members?

15

Strawman
Added 2 years ago

@BoredSaint no worries -- email sent!

I'll see what they say

11

BoredSaint
Added 2 years ago

@Strawman Thank you so much!

10
BoredSaint
Added 2 years ago

@mikebrisy

I've often wondered the above question (even though I continue to hold shares). NTO has a very impressive client list but what's stopping ADBE or DOCU from just acquiring the whole business just for the client list. At the current market cap it is worth roughly 1 week of revenue for ADBE to acquire the whole business. My answer to that is that ADBE simply don't think they need to spend the money to acquire even for such a low amount of money. ADBE have a superior product that they probably think will out compete everyone else.

I guess my thesis for still owning shares would be that NTO is able to continually gain market share from ADBE and DOCU without much churn as they are purely focused on the PDF and e-sign products. If however there is increasing churn in the coming quarters, this thesis would be broken.


17

jayjayjayjay
Added 2 years ago

I have no views at all on NTO the share. I reviewed it about 2 years ago following a discussion with a friend who works in finances and uses ADBE, DOCU and NTO within the business. This persons opinion was that NTO was the best product of all 3 in terms of simplicity and just everyday use. This person did not own shares so they were not trying to suggest it to me. Actually they likely know nothing about shares at all. Just thought I would add this comment.

I guess it is hard work for a third placer to take the mantle of 1 + 2. Seems like they certainly have a decent product though.

18

mikebrisy
Added 2 years ago

I agree with this assessment. My research on the product confirms many users agree with your points about simplicity and ease of use. The rate of uptake is not as explosive to suggest they’ll get a decent share of the big TAM, and the business economics don’t look great. When you are a « me too » product at number 3, you have to spend a lot to win market share and because of the incumbents, $NTO has no pricing power. I just can’t see a path to success and therefore I can’t own it.

15

mikebrisy
Added 2 years ago

I just wanted to pick up the client list point. A client logo can mean many things using a large international corporation as an example - of which they have many. 1) globally rolled out across all countries, business units and function; 2) globally used but in a subset of functions (e.g., legal, commercial); 3) adopted in one country or business unit and 4) just used by a function in the head office. Many other combinations exist. The point being that using a logo of a customer with 100,000 employers could mean 100, 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 users with obvious revenue implications. A page of impressive client logos has a marketing impact, but it can also obscure a wide range of business outcomes.

13

BoredSaint
Added 2 years ago

To your point above about the client list @mikebrisy

I believe NTO (as do a lot of enterprise SaaS software companies) do a free trial model whereby they may sign the client up but revenue and cash is not recognised until the customer actually pays up for the product. And as such, some "clients" on the list may not be providing NTO with any revenue at the current stage.

12