Forum Topics 3DP 3DP ARR

Pinned straw:

Added 5 months ago

The company won't reveal ARR (more on that below) but I think we can play a bit of financial Sodoku and make a reasonable estimate.

The Australian business is pretty easy. Lots of smaller, straight forward subscription contracts. Of the $2.2m revenue last financial year, I'm going to guess 80% of that is recurring (remaining 20% proof-of-concepts and short term projects). This gives $2.2m * 0.8 = $1.8m.

For the US, let's take the past 2 years revenue and subtract out the announced non-recurring contracts. Note, 2 years is important because a lot of the contracts run across multiple financial years.

This gives $13.1mAUD reported revenue less ~$6.7mAUD for the non-recurring deals announced 20-Sept-21 and 14-Dec-21. I have made some rough estimates here about the recurring portion of the original Entergy deal and an allowance for one-off work associated with hurricanes Ian and Nicole.

This leaves us with $3.2m pa ([$13.1m - $6.7m] / 2yrs). I'm going to take 50% of this as recurring. This might seem a little harsh but given the large value of announced PoCs and one-off work, I don't want to be overly optimistic. There is also a decent chance that some of that 2year old revenue has churned (haven't heard much about Eversource or PG&E lately...). So we have $3.2m * 0.5 = $1.6m.

A running total of $3.4m ($1.8m Aus + $1.6m USA).

Now it's time to add in the recurring deals that have been recently announced but won't be showing up in the accounts yet.

We have $1.35mUSD from the FPL expansion and $264kAUD from Main Roads announced 31-Jan-23. Revenue recognition isn't at all clear here but I will guess only 50% of the above was recognised as revenue in FY23. So +$1.1mAUD.

The Enel subscription from the last sales update is good for another $0.5mAUD.

This gives a grand total of $5mAUD at the last reporting date.

This is important because the company chose *not* to disclose ARR at this point in time. Logically, the only reason for this is because the ARR figure couldn't support the market cap (~$70m at the time). A price/ARR of 14x would be a bit of a stretch for a sub-scale, loss making business in the current market. And it would be quite shocking compared to the previously announced ACV in excess of $20mUSD. So I think I'm in the right ballpark.

Note I have not included the Amazon contract, the Entergy grid-hardening deal or the latest enterprise deal with a Tier-1 miner. These contracts alone could easily add another $5mAUD. My guess is that the company is waiting on these to come through to try and present a respectable ARR number in the new year.

I'd love it if anyone can provide any feedback on the numbers I've presented. Especially if there are obvious errors. This estimate is central to my thesis, so I'd love to know if it's way off.

Strawman
5 months ago

I cant fault your thinking @Hendy -- the $5m in ARR feels about right. Maybe it's a few million either side of that, but I dare say you're in the right ballpark. And I agree it is the relative size of that estimate relative to the last announced ACV as to why they don't want to publish it just yet (although, given the large erosion of trust, you'd have to wonder if a clear and transparent release of ARR would've done any more damage to the share price anyway).

Taking what Ian has said at face value, it seems they are just waiting for a series of big deals to be locked in and then they can release a much healthier looking number. Hopefully this is sooner rather than later.

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Hendy
5 months ago

You make a good point @Strawman that a range is more appropriate.

After trawling though the reports and contract announcements a few times, I'd say I'm, 70% confident that it sits in the $3mAUD to $7mAUD range.

It also depends a lot on what you count as recurring. I'm taking out PoCs and lidar procurement/processing. I'm leaving in the pole processing / grid hardening stuff (this is not really recurring but at least long term).

The positive news is that I think ARR is growing rapidly (off a small base) and the quality of revenue is improving. The contracts announced in the last year have all been enterprise subscriptions. The deals announced in 2021 were almost entirely PoCs and lidar processing.

Given it doesn't take a huge ARR number to support the current market cap, I suspect we find out soon.

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