Thanks @Seymourbutts

Each firm has to make its own judgement as to whether the news will have a "material impact" on share price or financial performance, or whether it reflects a "significant development" in the company's operations. This judgement is complex and subjective, and I don't know if anyone has tested a quantification of it in Australia.

For example, if you are $PME with a forward P/E of >100, then the current SP requires a deal flow of several material deals in each period. Arguably here, a large 5-year contract of $10m or $20m is "not material" and doesn't warrant an announcement. On the contrary, the current SP assumes these are occurring on a continuous basis. (As an aside, there will likely come one or two six-month periods when these deals just don't happen - the opportunity then exists at this time for a signfiicant SP correction, which is why $PME remains on my watch list.)

$PME's latest deal given its own ASX announcement was for US$12m over 8 years, so a CARR of US$1.5m or only 1.2% of FY23FC sales. By comparison, $VHT's incremental CARR of US$0.25m is only 0.8% of FC sales.

If you believe $VHT will continue to grow and be profitable, then it is arguably below fair value at the moment. Therefore, a relatively smaller deal might still be judged material, both given the smaller scale of the business and its relatively low valuation (implied long term growth rate).

Kate Quirk at $ALC has communicated a clear policy that smaller deals will be summarised in the one pager update at each quarterly 4C presentation. So for $ALC, you'd expect a reduced newsflow, and for those deals that are announced to really "move the dial". Their latest special announcement was the extentsion to the Leidos deal, which added A$1.8m of CARR, c. 4% of FC sales - significantly above what appears to be the threshold at both $PME and $VHT. Way to go, Kate!

From personal experience at a FTSE-20 company many years ago when I was an insider, I'm pretty confident CEOs and CFOs don't do this kind of benchmarking. My sense is that psychology and "individual value drivers" play a role. For example, the more a CEO considers the SP to be under-valued, the lower the threshold to make an announcement.

I imagine that the psychology of announcing is also influenced by proximity to key milestone dates, like measurement points for compensation calculations, option vesting dates etc. Of course, I have no way of knowing how these factors are playing out at each of $PME, $VHT and $ALC. But I can't help but do the calculations every time I see an announcement that doesn't appear to be material and is more like "business as usual". Part of this will also be influenced by the nature of the relationship between the Board and the CEO and how much each is invested in the firm. For example, a strong independent Board can temper an enthusiastic CEO who wants to get news out there! To be clear, I am not alleging anything improper. But in my own experiece as an insider over the years, everyone is human and the personal stakes colour perceptions, whether conscious or subconscious.

Coming back to $VHT, in conclusion, January's announcement of the bunch of large, new deals was definitely material. The three ASX announcements during March and April - in my view - are not. To me, they might indicate concern by Terri and the Board that the market has come off the boil after initially appreciating January's good news. As existing customers expanding/extending/upgrading, the deals might have better been aggregated (per $ALC approach) and used to support a key message at the 4C presentation: "our existing customers like our products and are buying more of them."

Irrespective of all of this, in aggregate, the four announcements taken together are good news!