oh boy, you guys are very forgiving, i wish i had you both as clients in a past life! the C-suite has bungled here but in stabilisaiotna mode which is starting to appear here. they need to fulfill the promise of CF b/e to preserve cash. the interesting revenue numbers in SM chart above, to me, show how easy you can extrapolate a trend that doesnt eventuate, the massive slowing in revenue grwoth over the last year or so. if ALC can regain any grwoth it is very cheap at these prices couls be easily 2-3X higher imo, held--baggy style

i missed the call, was on DSE, my suggestion to stagger these calls has gone unheard for the last 25 years lol, so these statements are made without the benefit of the call

Definitely one of my (many) weaknesses @Solvetheriddle -- i'm always too forgiving of management (especially when I hold shares in the company!)

I do tend to think investors sometimes assume management have more control over things than is reasonable. Business is just hard, and always being battered by a variety of external forces. And we also put too much weight on short term factors, imo.

In Alcidion's case, you had a business with great traction and strong growth in a market that had a lot of share to give. If I were CEO in FY23, I could totally see myself expanding resources in anticipation of bigger things. And then, all of a sudden, your customers' purse strings tighten and you're left with a bloated cost base and waning growth, and every captain hindsight calling for your head!

The counter-factual is you under-resourced and under-invested in product and made sales, fulfilment and support teams overly stretched and unable to deliver to customer expectations. You got some better margins and cash flows for a bit, but in time you just got overtaken by more aggressive competitors. (Maybe Reckon is an example here -- perhaps it would have been a different story for them had they invested more in development and sales before Xero had the chance to overtake them?)

At any rate, no matter the circumstances -- whether it's just bad luck or bad judgement -- at a point you have to recognise when the thesis is busted. It's not quite there for me yet with Alcidion (and it's a <2% position for me these days anyway), so we'll see if they can get their groove back.

"If I were CEO in FY23, I could totally see myself expanding resources in anticipation of bigger things." Based on the facts that were available to you at the time, that seems reasonable to me. Except that one of the facts - if not a major factor- we relied on, was what the actual CEO was saying at the time. The actual CEO, who had access to a whole range of information we didn't have.

I immediately think of an epic scene in a fairly good movie:

Margin Call (3/9) Movie CLIP - The Music Stops (2011) HD (youtube.com)

"I am here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. Standing here tonight I'm afraid I don't hear a thing." Jeremy Irons gets it...

With the benefit of hindsight (which is one thing we do have) they either didn't have the read of the room or they did but misread it. What's changed that we now think they are reading the room? Why pay em big bucks if they're job is just to shuffle papers and present the occasional powerpoint deck?

(I'm reflecting a lot of my own frustration at trusting management in holdings I've got wrong here).

@Strawman i absolutely get what you are saying but when it comes to a deep discount raise it's a fail unfortunately imo. what i am seeing here is a very strong CEO, a Chair out of her depth and a weak CFO (sorry for not pulling punches). That is fine as long as the CEO calls are all great, if not, there is not an adequate balance for pushback in the boardroom, imo, that leads to what we have here. at least its not terminal just dilutionary. i would add that it's a problem with micros generally, a great bord is worth its expense.

i also have an inside spy that i rely to verify this info.

@TPI1, @Solvetheriddle, @Strawman and @Noddy74 - I don't own shares in Alcidion but I used to.

I sold when they raised capital 3 or 4 years ago and did it by placement only, excluding their retail shareholders. Unless it is a completely unavoidable situation and the business will go broke within a few weeks without urgent capital, there is simply no excuse for treating one class of shareholders so badly. I wrote to CEO Quirk at the time for an explanation and received no reply - that's all I need to know - she/they simply don't care enough about their retail shareholders. What's particularly galling/stupid about that, is retail shareholders make up more than 50% of the register.

Having looked at it again today it seems like a pretty ordinary Board and none have any real skin in the game other than CEO Quirk, so that's another telling sign.

I wish everyone luck that still holds it but to channel Mr Buffett -

"We want a management team that are stewards of shareholder capital. The best managers think like owners in making business decisions. They have shareholder interests at heart"

Alcidion currently fails this test and it's a higher hurdle as a result that I don't need to jump over...

Yup, all excellent points guys.

And I didn't mean to suggest the key decision makers are totally blameless.

I guess it comes down to how many strikes you give before you call out.

I do tend to think investors sometimes assume management have more control over things than is reasonable.

The problem is when management start to think that! Without an effective board there's no one who will push back on that, as ALC shareholders have found out.

So many ASX boards are just hopelessly underpowered for the supervisory part of the job. It's really about assembling a group of people who can provide a veneer that lets the company go out and raise money. In ALC's case, from what I can see, Chamberlain is the only board member with any operational experience in either software of healthcare.

There are some great comments in this thread. Particularly agree with the points made by @Noddy74 and @Karmast. I take a bearish view too. Ultimately capital allocation is a principal - if not the most important - responsibility of the CEO. And this is where @Noddy74's point hits home hard. Most of us would agree they got this completely wrong and didn't leave enough room in the kitty for when things don't go the way you anticipated. When environmental conditions changed and cash was much more difficult to access they were left holding their *insert profanity*. Last year I posted a bear case that mainly took aim at the dilution caused by this business - the result of chasing growth. This is still relevant in my opinion - and more than anything else dilution kills returns for shareholders.

Only so many hospitals in the world where you can trial and deploy your software. Yes there is population growth, but everywhere right now is trying to contain costs and hence could actually be less hospitals being built than before. Also you have the bigger software players taking a slice of the pie. And a great example of the Microeconomic theory of marginal rate of production.

Royal North Shore Hospital (Public) uses Oracle Cerner which I found from just inquiring with the staff at how my mum has been since being admitted to hospital recently when they showed me the admission history on the screen as it is nearly all open desk in EMR.

That's all I need to know about the Healthcare IT sector I think and a little nugget of knowledge to keep in mind ....

To be fair it is probably not ALC's fault of the board. Maybe it is middle management not seeing the situation first hand from their front line sales force and then communicating up the chain of command?

Think that's all I will add for now as there have been so many comments now for just one company. There are always other opportunities to look for