This is great @RhinoInvestor -- also, love the questions you have in Slido.

I'll be sure to put these to Dirk.

Thanks @strawman for the very, very good conversation with Dirk this morning. Walked away with a much clearer understanding of the financial, cashflow and deployment profile.

A few immediate bottomline numbers that we now have clarity on and will feed into an updated cashflow model:

• Capex per unit is $3.8m
• Lifespan of each unit is 20 years, refurbishment is expected around the 10 year mark
• Deployment planning starts 18 months out, each unit is ordered 12M out from deployment, but capital cost to the manufacturer is substantially back-ended such that the capital cost is paid when revenue starts being earned

Will put more detailed notes together later today as there is a lot more detail to digest and make sense of!

My pleasure @jcmleng -- they seem to have a really interesting business here. Moreover, the unit economics seem attractive -- and I thought Dirk's comments at the end were really on point.

I'm having trouble uploading the video on the Meetings page, but you can find it here in the meantime:

@Strawman thanks for getting to all of those questions on the call. Great info to help inform the thinking around valuation.

I found Dirk's back of the envelope valuation of a machine at the end of the call interesting (but maybe a little disturbing) ... no Discount rate being applied in his model.

If I model 2m Gross Profit per annum per machine and apply a discount rate of 10% then I think that's a 10 year (the number after which he indicated machine would require a refurb and accountants have depreciated down its value) then I get that as something like 12m gross profit. Deduct the 3.7-3.8m capital for the machine (not even taking into account its financing costs) and you are down to about 8.5m. If I were to value the company on that basis then their market cap today ($622m) would indicate they need something like 70 machines. Given the 20 machine install base with 18 machine per annum rollout their valuation seems to include around 11 quarters of forward deployment.

I also found his answer to headcount interesting (given they keep all the HC costs outside the Gross profit and sitting in operating expenses). Sounded like HC could double again. While it was good that some of this ramp up is due to geographic expansion (into new continents and countries) the HC per deployed machine has still been increasing over the last few years and it will be good to see if that ratio starts to come down soon.

DISC: Held IRL (and done quite well since buying in Feb 2023) still bullish long term but I don't think I'm going to back the truck up at the current share price. I still reckon valuation in low $5 range is closer to the pin.

Ha, yeah I noticed that too @RhinoInvestor

tbh, while I haven't done any real work on this one, my initial take is to also see this as an attractive business, but one that is potentially a tad too expensive. Then again, fast growing, high quality revenue businesses often look that way!

@RhinoInvestor, after your comments, I re-listened to the back end of the conversation where Dirk talked about the machine valuation. The numbers came us when Strawman asked what was the most misunderstood point about C79 in conversations with shareholders. I took his reply with the numbers to illustrate his point that the market has not wrapped their head around the step increase in 20-year annuity revenue streams that each unit adds to the overall company's value. I suspect he knew he had oversimplified the numbers because he then clarified the numbers he used. Hence, his use of the numbers did not trouble me given the transparency of the financials overall. But your calculations make sense to temper that bullishness!

The headcount response was interesting. I have a different perspective on that.

Dirk talked extensively about "being the best technology and providing the best customer experience while there is no competition" as their current main focus. He also talked about the new technology risk being reduced for new customers as global adoption of PA gained pace. I was watching out for signs of arrogance and complacency from Dirk as the moat is such a strong one (I had images of Gru addressing his minions in wanting to steal the moon!). That he is driving C79 with this mindset with no hint of arrogance, but rather to strengthen the moat, was a big tick for me.

They cannot do this without adding upfront headcount I think. The technology is new and there is no ready pool of experienced people they can bring in at short notice to boost capacity, either for Support or deployment acceleration. They will have to be blooded from scratch, or best case, pinch experienced PA users from customer sites ....

FY24's headcount growth will be telling in terms of C79's plans round both moat entrenchment and future deployment acceleration - it is probably also a bit of a leading indicator of deployment acceleration.

I thus think they have no choice but to increase their technical/operational headcount now, rather than constrain it to keep a lid on costs. In fact, I would probably see headcount reductions or flatlining as quite a red flag as it could signal a slowdown in deployment momentum and/or dminished customer experience.

What will also be good to see is a chart which shows headcount by region, country, site, current and planned - to line up with Dirk's model of headcount. This should then inform as to whether headcount additions are wise or frivolous moves.

@jcmleng I found the point that he expected Headcount to double again this year a bit disturbing actually. That's mainly because they carry the HC number in operating expenses. This number increased from 9.7m to 19.4m last year as they doubled HC and if they double again then that will consume most of the Gross Profit increases from the increase of 20 up to 38 deployed units.

I can understand that it needs to grow with rollout geographically to service the equipment, my main concern is it seems to be linear (actually the ratio of HC to installed machines has been increasing over the last couple of years). I'm wondering where they get to the economy of scale point.