IKE had an astonishingly high Q1 revenue number, hitting close to $7m in sales, $5.7m of which was subs and transactions. That’s about half of the total Fy22 results alone – exceptional stuff! Transaction revenue was the bulk of that at $3.8m, suggesting a flurry of activity in pole captures. Really encouraging stuff.

However... digging deeper, the gross margins on these transaction shrunk again from 45% in FY22 to 41% for Q1 FY23. Only 2 enterprise customers were added in the quarter as well, taking it to a total of 349.

The shrinking of the gross margins on transaction revenue suggests to me additional staff costs in the IKE Analyse product, coupled with a lack of pricing power from larger customers. Neither bodes well for cash burn, so I’m still going to sit on the sidelines until more concrete cash flows are reported in the half-year. 

Having said that, it’s clear that IKE is going in one direction. It just remains to be seen if it’s sustainable. Super interesting space and their business model is attracting customers, but I'm just keen to see more clout in their ability to set prices at their discretion.

Holding a small position for now, and will add to it if cash burn is reduced in the half-year report. Glenn needs to demonstrate cost control and pricing power from here at this scale though. No more cap raises, please! 

When IKE’s prelim. results came a few weeks ago I thought they looked stellar. However, now that the full report is out I have some reservations.

@mikebrisy done a good job of outlining many of the highlights in recent straws, like >70% revenue growth, >$20m in contract values, etc., but the key thing that struck me was actually just how high the cash burn was despite all that growth.

That burn was ~$6m NZD for the full year, or about ~100% or so up on last year. This is not a sign – despite what CEO Glenn has said recently – that the business is demonstrating operating leverage. Growing the top line by ~70% whilst doubling the burn is very worrying, especially in this macro environment.

From what I can gather, most of that burn is attributed to the IKE Insight product development, which is being built on the back of the Visual Globe purchase last year. They bought it for NZD $3.3m upfront with some generous milestone payouts as well (none achieved so far), yet it only delivered ~$285k in revenue last year. This is despite delivering ~$750k in 2020! So all in all, this product segment – although not really material – has dropped by about 70% (not great). It's dragging down the overall performance of the business, which is otherwise doing quite well. 

They are carrying the IKE Insight segment as about ~$8.5m in value on the balance sheet, and forecasting 433% growth (whoah!) next year, BUT an impairment will be put on this carrying value if forecasts are less than just 10% off (I think I've read that right). Given they've so far only paid $3.3m, does its valuation imply they've spent ~$5m on its integration? That's a huge expense for just $280k revenue.

10% variance on a >400% forecast seems like too fine a needle to thread to me, and I just can’t help but think they’ve paid too much for these assets. The PoleForeman acquisition in (I think) 2019 generated so much cross-sell value, but this one has really failed to meet my expectations so far. @Strawman, I’m keen to press Glenn on this front when we meet him next week, as it’s looking like they’re throwing good money after bad here potentially. 

The key question investors need to think about is whether on not that >400% growth forecast can be trusted. It would require about $1.5m in revenue this year, so we'd need to wait for the half-year report to see how it's tracking. It's possible, but it uptake needs to happen much faster. Do they need to put more salespeople on to make it happen? Perhaps, but that implies more staff expenses, office space, etc., etc.

In other scattered thoughts, although they do have a healthy cash balance (>$20m), I think they'll raise capital again this year. Glenn's spoken about other potential acquisitions in recent months, and that level of burn means not raising would probably be flying too close to the sun. So my base case is an acquisition in the next 6 months or so, coupled with a raise to fund it. More dilution is not what I wanted to see... Granted, it's a hunch, but they've raised cash each of the last 5 years or so, meaning it's straight out of their playbook for now.

Anyway, without the Visual Globe acquisition (now IKE Insight), I think they could have been op. cash flow positive, so management will need to work very hard to justify the purchase and investment into this segment. 

I still really like the company and tech, and it IS still growing at a decent clip with good tailwinds. But... the market is quite rightly punishing companies that are losing money this fast, and IKE will not be left behind in the coming months. How much money are they willing to put into the Insight segment before they either cut their losses, or double down? Time will tell.

I’ll need to consider how big a position this one remains in my portfolio after these results, and update my valuation to reflect these thoughts. a 10x multiple seems way too juicy now, and I will need to cut it down.

Very solid final quarter from IKE this morning, with everything more or less moving in the right direction. Total revenue of NZ $16m actually beat my expectations of $15m, suggesting that Q4 was very very good – no doubt boosted by the passing of the US infrastructure package Senate. 

I’m reasonably confident the company is Operating Cash Flow Positive now, though we’ll have to wait until 30th May to know for sure. Opex has typically increased by only minor amounts in previous years, so it’ll be close, though they have put on more staff this year. Touch and go.

The standout number in my mind was the % increase of platform transaction revenue, which shot up 178% over the past year from NZ $2.3m to NZ $6.4m. Though off a low base (covid), last year wasn’t hugely impacted, so it’s extremely encouraging. Basically, all this means is that more companies are taking snapshots of power poles. 

Platform subscription margins shrank slightly to bring the overall gross margin down from 64% to 62%, but I think this will trend up in FY23 as transaction revenue ramps up to take up more of the leg work. I would want to see this number higher in FY23 to demonstrate operating leverage. 

Billable transactions in total skyrocketed from just 53k in FY21 to 349k in FY22, and up by ~150k alone in Q4 (again, this just means more companies snapping power poles). Coupled with management commentary around the contracted revenue flowing in at between $15-17m in FY23, and we should expect another standout year. 

Next year should be another standout if management commentary is to be believed.

Final thought is that I’d like to see more detail on the IKE Insight product and how that’s starting to play into the revenue mix, since it’s a little opaque at the moment. @Strawman, might be worth getting CEO Glenn Milnes on to chat to us about that in the coming weeks? I think they have enough traction now to warrant a chat – and after all, this is a tricky company to wrap your head around!

Solid quarter from IKE, with a decent improvement in revenue despite some voluntary Telco 5G rollout issues in the states. 

YTD revenue of approx. NZ $9.9m, $4.2m of which was in Q3, and a 100% improvement on the pcp. Gross margins remain reasonably steady, hovering around the mid-60% mark on average from all streams. Tonnes of cash on hand and no debt should see them through to CF+, though there's no details of expenses in the release.

Billable transactions went fractionally down in the quarter on Q2 (~100k vs. ~74k), though the revenue from those transactions was $1.7m for a RPBT (Revenue per Billable Transaction) of about $23. 74k is much less than I was anticipating, but given H1 FY22 RPBT was just $14.38, the top line wasn’t affected at all.

In short, fewer transactions QoQ, but increased revenue per transaction. Obviously would prefer if both were moving north, but it’s still a record quarter. 

What’s most pleasing is that the mix of transaction revenue – where I see the scale of the business really kicking in – is bang on par with subscription revenue for the first time, suggesting that billable transactions will become the big revenue driver. For context, the same time last year the transactions were roughly half.

Although subscription revenue attracts a much higher gross margin right now (88%), I suspect the transaction revenue margins will improve as 100’s of thousands of transactions take place, helped along by the IKE Insight product (AI/Machine Learning) which will automate more of the analysis. This revenue mix is probably the key indicator for me in the next few quarters in terms of judging the operational leverage in the business.

Other items of note were that enterprise customers grew to 319 (only an additional 11 added in the quarter), contracts won continues to grow at a decent rate, hardware sales look to have improved, and I’m conscious that 5G rollout by large providers in the US are finally fully underway.

Maintaining my valuation, given they look set to touch NZ $15m in sales come the end of March, which is bang on my estimates.

Full announcement here.

Slightly improved numbers from the half year results, as the US opens up and activity starts to get back to pre-covid levels. Total revenue for Q2 was ~$3.1m, up from ~$2.6m in Q1, a slightly weaker than expected number, though trending in the right direction. Gross margins fell from 67% in FY21 to 63% as operating costs grew, and the loss widened to -$6.2m. Balance sheet remains strong with about $30m in cash and no debt.

Biggest detractors to the widening loss were primarily a $1m share based payment that’s been expensed, and an extra $1.4m in employee costs. Some additional travel costs also look to have made a small dent, and marketing efforts were ramped up too, which hopefully will bear fruit in the coming quarters. 

At first glance, I was worried that the business wasn’t showing any signs of operating leverage, with rising employee costs broadly matching the increase in revenue, but a closer look at the pole transaction numbers offer a glimpse into how the business might begin to scale from here.

Pole transactions

On this front, revenue per billed transaction or ’RPBT’ for short, once again decreased as activity picked up going from $38.50 p/capture in Q1 FY21, to $16.38 p/capture in Q1 FY22, and $14.38 for the full first half FY22.

Although this shows a steady decline, it actually highlights the uptick in transactions on the combined platform and demonstrates that field activity has doubled in Q2, with almost 100k captures/transactions completed compared to 60k in Q1. 

The % increase on the PCP was a staggering 500%(!), which to be fair was covid impacted:

This transaction number is really the key number one to watch moving forward, as there’s no incremental cost to IKE for companies to transact on the platform as a service segment (unless they getting IKE Analysts to do the legwork) so there’s huge operating leverage to be had IF they can get more customers on board. 

Historically IKE Analyze transactions are billed out higher at ~$40 p/transaction, but looking at the operating segment breakdown, it looks to my eye that they’ve actually decreased their pricing here, probably to get some large contracts over the line. That would explain the drop in RPBT. 

IKE Insight

The new insight product generated $61k in revenue, the first from the AI acquisition they made earlier in the year. So far not a very productive addition, so watching this closely. There are huge earn outs for the previous owners if they stay on and hit revenue targets, and on these numbers they look likely to be missed. On a recent earnings call, Glenn did mention they were working closely with a large telco on developing this side of things, so perhaps there'll be more to come in the 2nd half.

Outlook

It’s ambitious, but I think they can still manage to get NZD $15m for the full year based on what I’m seeing in the billable transaction increases. BUT, they would need an extra ~500k transactions to get there, give or take. They’ll provide another update in late January on Q3, so we’ll know more then. It still seems like a lot is baked into the SP, and it's till early days, but there's huge upside if they get into the millions of pole transactions per half, rather than the 160k we've just seen.

No change to my valuation at this stage.

$1m Contract extension

Another small contract extension announced this morning, as part of a larger organisation’s continued use of the IKE platform. No specific mention of the client in question, but my guess would be that it’s someone like AT&T, who’ve been with IKE for a very long time and have huge 5G ambitions. The announcement is relatively immaterial from a revenue point of view, but it adds more weight to the idea that the IKE platform is invaluable for these large customers, and deeply embedded into their workflows.

It’s possible that this might be one of the first IKE Insight contracts given the CEO commentary in the recent AGM, but it’s impossible to tell from the announcement. On that note, management were extremely confident of securing some IKE Insights contracts in the coming year, with a couple of pilot programmes already underway, and some large customers assessing the use case.

I think it’s very probable that we’ll continue to see more of these types of announcements in the coming year, but we need to see it translate into receipts soon in order to justify the valuation. Maintaining my valuation and holding for now, but would look to add to it if the last quarter’s numbers track much higher than last – and they should given the amount of contract wins in recent months.

Full announcement here.

IKE has signed a small extension agreement (NZD $0.63m over two years) with a Fibre deployment company on the US east coast. Not sure why it’s especially material, but nevertheless it adds more evidence to the thesis that the product adds significant value to these companies given their willingness to expand usage. 

With a large chunk of the infrastructure bill passed in the US Senate this week, I remain convinced that more of these wins will appear over the next few years, as companies unlock the funding to speed up the 5G rollout. 

Final thought is that at $630k for 10,000 pole assets (or ~NZD $63 p/pole), this is an IKE Analyze contract, and should boost the ‘Revenue Per Billed Transaction’ (RPBT) figure in next year’s numbers.

Full announcement here.

Well as previously flagged, IKE is raising capital this week to bolster the balance sheet.

Details are still being fleshed out, but they’re looking to raise about AUD$18m via a placement, plus a small SPP of $3m. All in all, it should add about ~23m shares into the mix.

The AFR is reporting that the placement price will be $0.95c or a 14.4% discount to the current share price, so a fairly generous discount at that. They’re also reporting that $12m will be put aside as a war chest for potential acquisitions, leaving $10m for additional working capital.

I’m in two minds about the move. On the one hand, it’s come earlier than I anticipated and isn’t linked to any specific purpose as yet. On the other, it will take advantage of a relatively high share price to limit dilution. The timing is also curious, given the long awaited US Infrastructure bill is set to pass in the next day or so, of which IKE should be a huge beneficiary. To my mind, it would have made more sense to wait for it to pass and use the momentum to help grease the wheels here.

Will dust off the spreadsheet and update my valuation in the next day or so.

IKE Q1 FY22 Results

A bit of a mixed set of results from IKE this morning for Q1 FY22, despite a slew of impressive contract announcements in the previous quarter.

One the one hand, gross margins, pole transactions, signed contracts and new enterprise customers all marched in the right direction. On the other, the top line number (NZ$2.6m) was less than what I was expecting, albeit a beat on the PCP and about on par with Q4FY21.

The most marked change in numbers reported is between what I’m going to call the Revenue Per Billable Transaction (or ’RPBT’ for short) across the combined IKE Platform. In Q1 FY20, that number was NZ$38.50, compared to the current quarter of NZ$16.38, a huge reduction despite the total revenue beat and more than 3 times the amount of pole transactions (58k vs. 20k). 

The only thing I can pin this down to is a few large enterprise customers managing the pole analysis themselves – which gets billed at about a tenth of the cost of IKE Analyze (~$4 vs. ~$40, depending on the contract). Given the gross margins improved in this metric from 48% to 52%, this seems to confirm the theory, as IKE staff did less of the work. 

Having said all that, it’s an encouraging sign to see that Q1 FY22 billed pole transactions (58K) actually beat all of FY21 combined (53K). This clearly demonstrates that activity has drastically picked up in recent months as large enterprise customers start field collection once more. If IKE can improve RPBT from this point whilst also increasing pole transactions, that creates a powerful flywheel effect moving forward.

IKE burnt ~$2.8m of cash in the quarter according to the commentary, which means they have about 3-4 quarters left for the remainder of the year. It would be more if not for the Visual Globe acquisition (now labelled as ‘IKE Insight’), but the likelihood of a raise in the coming months seems quite likely, especially if they need to pay out the performance hurdles of that acquisition.

That aside, I remain cautiously optimistic about the remainder of the year given the $11.5m in new contracts signed over the last 6 months and the backlog of contract work still to come. Just watching the revenue numbers and cash on hand moving forward.

Full announcement here.

IKE wins further material customer contracts 

Another excellent contract announcement out today which confirms the trajectory of the business for FY22. This is great news for holders, and confirms my suspicions that there is plenty of runway left for utility contractors across North America to sign up to IKE as part of their maintenance agreements with larger telcos. The thesis is playing out nicely, and management are executing well coming out of COVID.

An additional $1.2m in revenue will be added to this current financial year, with potential for upside next year. At $1.2m for 40,000 poles, the contract indicates it’s most likely an ‘IKE Analyze’ contract, whereby Ikegps manage the pole processing rather than the customer. 

Any major expansion on this – which they’ve flagged as possible in FY23 – could generate huge returns since each pole for an Analyze contract is charged at ~$30 p/pole, as opposed to ~$3-4 p/pole for a standard contract. 

There was another $400k contract embedded in the announcement for good measure too, so there’s plenty of reason to think more of these contracts will pop up over the course of the year. 

Ike FY21 Results

A mixed set of results from Ike’s full year report posted earlier this month. On the one hand, the outlook for FY22 looks extremely strong based on forward contracts and management commentary. On the other, revenue was heavily dented by fewer pole captures whilst the virus was wreaking havoc across North America. Q4 fell short of expectations too, with the hope that some of the missing revenue will flow into this year.

Ike posted revenue (unaudited, in NZD) of ~$9.3m compared with $9.8m in the previous year, for a net loss of $8.4m – about $3m higher than the previous year. I guess the encouraging thing was that expenses were all broadly in line with the previous year, with the exception of cost of sales, most likely due to a higher headcount from the Visual Globe acquisition. That, and the initial cost of the acquisition meant they burnt through a fair chunk of cash, so there’s a good chance they’ll need to do another raise later this year. They’ve got ~$11m left in the bank, so it will be touch and go.

Looking at the breakdown of revenue from the operating segments, there’s actually some encouraging signs for the year ahead. Although subscription revenues were relatively stable, the IKE Analyze contribution plummeted by about 30% or $1m. 

Although this looks bad, it does suggest they weren’t actually losing customers, and instead the drop in revenue this year was simply that they were processing less poles. With North America back to normal this coming year, I would expect there to be a marked improvement in this segment from here. IKE Analyze is the part of the workflow where IKE staff do pole processing on behalf of the client, and each pole they process earns them roughly ~$40, depending on the client and contract. Clients who do this themselves still get charged about ~$4 p/pole. 

Pole Foreman revenue doubled over the year as well to ~$1m, so that recent acquisition is proving to be a transformative buy. We can only hope the recent AI purchase from Visual Globe is as effective in both generating income and cross-selling to existing clients.

Sales and marketing costs seem quite high relative to other outgoings ($5.5m), and we saw in the earnings call some of the brand work that’s being done in the background, so potentially this expense drops in the next year. I think it’s too high, but it’s likely there’s a bunch of stuff lumped in there that isn’t design or advertising, so difficult to say with certainty.

Looking ahead, there’s been some very good contract signs in recent months, which suggests that the business is gaining some traction and establishing itself as a capture standard. I’d say I’m cautiously optimistic that this year will be a standout, provided restrictions continue to be eased and field workers can get back to work.

Biden’s recent stimulus plans should have a direct impact on IKE in years to come too, so there’s plenty on offer for long-term holders. 

Having said all that, I will have to revise my valuation, given the year just gone fell short of my initial expectations. 

Report here

Large contract extension 

Great news out yesterday from Ike, with another large contract extension out of pilot phase with a large utility company in the US.

This will add a minimum additional $1.2m (NZD) in transaction revenue across 350,000 assets, or in other words, an additional ~15% revenue in FY22 (based on FY21 numbers). Given the original signing was only in October last year, that’s a real vote of confidence in their capture software to progress so soon.

However buried in the announcement is the unaudited amount of $9.3m revenue for the full year. This falls short of my estimated $10m, meaning they only did ~$2.8m for the March quarter. Although higher than FY20 by about $100k, it fell way short of my expectations. This could be seasonality or even still some COVID lag, but management will need to start beating expectations this year as conditions improve across North America. 

Market is probably right to not get carried away here goiven all this, but there does seem to be growing momentum in contract signings, and clear evidence that large utilities find their product and service more than useful.

Announcement here.

IKE material contract win

The company today announced a $0.7m ARR contract win from a US-based engineering services business which will now utilise the IKE platform.

They didn’t name the company directly, however they indicated that they service a number of large telcos, including Crown Castle (CCI) – who IKE also revealed as the large customer that standardised on the IKE platform late last year. 

The scope of the potential with CCI standardising on the IKE platform is the big news here. They contract over 200 firms to maintain their various networks, so even getting a handful of these onside would translate into huge upside.

If the headline is to be believed, and CCI have begun rolling out the IKE platform, then it’s reasonable to expect many more of these announcements in the near term, as their suppliers are forced to adopt IKE standards. Great news for holders. 

Announcement here.

IKE Q3 Results

Ikegps gave an update today for Q3 (they’re on a NZ reporting cycle), flagging slightly disappointing headline numbers, with the caveat that Q4 is looking very strong so far. 

Q3 revenue came in at NZD $2.1m for a YTD running total of $6.5m, which is lower than my expectations, though the December quarter is typically their weakest – with wintery conditions and seasonal holidays interrupting activity – not to mention an attempted coup thrown in this year for good measure…

Gross margins contracted slightly, down from 72% to 67%. I would expect this to lift again as activity picks up, Coivd recedes, and the AI business they recently acquired starts to do more of the pole analysis in years to come, so not too concerned with the drop at this stage.

Though no longer the business driver here, capital equipment sales (labelled as ‘one-time revenue’ on the attached graph) have also dropped off significantly this year. It’s not really a concern because they've been transitioning to a SaaS model for a few years now, but it’s nonetheless a painful thing to watch, especially given the hit to subscription revenue as well on the back of a terrible federal response to the virus spread.

Having said all that, based on management commentary Q4 should be stellar, so looking for a strong finish to the year here. Many of the deferred contracts look set to finally commence after a period of hibernation, so that should begin to steady the ship. Last year’s Q4 did about $2.7m revenue, so I think they’ll need to hit ~$4m to restore confidence in the trajectory and beat last year’s total revenue, which was about ~$10m, and I think they'll get there.

Visual Globe

The recent transaction of Visual Globe will likely be occupying a lot of management’s time when the core business and key clients need to be nurtured coming out of Covid, so a rapid implementation is critical. However the value proposition is greatly strengthened with the purchase, since potential customers in theory no longer need to spend on capital equipment purchases upfront (other than a drone or mobile phone) to being using the platform. We should expect an even faster growing customer base and/or contracts in the coming year with this purchase, in particular I'm on the lookout for a good uptake of existing Visual Globe customers, despite a relatively small client base. 

Final note, there’s still NZD $18m on the balance sheet and no debt, even after the initial transaction costs for Visual Globe, so the business is very well capitalised heading into the recovery. We should expect a very good FY22 if they exit the year strongly in this final quarter and with so much cash to deploy. 

On the surface, today’s acquisition looks like a really smart strategic fit for IKE. Bolting on machine learning capabilities to their exisiting software was something they flagged a while back, and is a natural extension of their current offering. 

In theory, IKE customers now no longer need to purchase IKE hardware to start capturing pole data, since the new AI capability allows them to record from drones and mobile phones, a really interesting step forward that should lower the cost of entry for all customers.

The AI is also (in theory) able to accurately record pole assets, a traditionally time consuming and laborious process, so that IKE can process a much larger amount of poles. This should translate into much more revenue from many more customers.

Difficult to say if they have paid the right price, but pleasingly there’s no cap. raise involved to finance the purchase, so shareholders aren’t getting diluted.

Only time will tell if the integration works well, and there are some key personnel from Visual Globe that will need to be retained for things to work smoothly I suspect. But there are some very juicy bonuses involved if they are retained, and if certain performance hurdles are met.

All in all, a really interesting development, and earlier in the journey than I suspected. Could be a game changer.

ikeGPS is a dual-listed kiwi company that provides ‘pole capture’ enterprise software to large US communications and utility companies. There are two distinct arms to the business, but in recent years the focus has shifted away from their ‘Spike’ hardware to the ‘IKE Analyze’ cloud solution in North America.

In simple terms, IKE Analyze is an end-to-end solution that provides hardware and software to help ‘capture’ utility pole information with increased speed and accuracy.

A field worker will take highly-detailed images of a utility pole with specialised IKE hardware. That data goes on to create an accurate ‘digital twin’ of the pole in IKE’s cloud software. This ‘twin’ can be assessed remotely by a software analyst for structural stability and additional hardware positioning.

The accuracy of the capture data means permit approval for hardware additions is more than halved when compared with traditional methods, and has been a key driver of its success in signing up major US telecommunication companies, since that speed is particularly useful – and cost-effective – in the competitive rollout of 5G. 

There is a real chance IKE will dominate this niche, because in most instances there is simply no direct competitor. There are some disparate pieces of software and hardware that can be cobbled together to create a similar workflow, but IKE is the only true end-to-end solution that specialises here, and as such is much better suited for large scale projects. 

Furthermore, about a year ago they made a very smart – and relatively inexpensive  – software acquisition in ‘Pole Foreman’, which is the component that measures ‘pole loading’. In simple terms, this is the amount of strain that a pole will undergo in strong winds, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. This piece of software was already deeply embedded within the industry when they bought it, and so came with a strong moat and a legion of customers, some of which have gone on to sign large contracts. 

Finally, all that captured data is kept on file as part of an immense and comprehensive ‘pole record’. This data set comes with enormous potential to monetise longer term, as companies may come to rely on up-to-date data sets for larger projects, planning, and all sorts of possibilities. 

In addition to hardware costs and yearly subscriptions fees, for every pole that’s analysed there is an additional fee. I suspect it’s in the region of $3-$4, depending on the customer and contract, but I haven't been able to confirm this to date. 

This transition to a mix of high-margin per-pole and subscription revenue means IKE is looking on track to tip into profitability in the next couple years. With operating costs mostly fixed, it's showing early signs of decent operating leverage, and at a certain point any revenue should float straight to the bottom line. It's well capitalised after a recent raise, still has its founder on board as the CTO, has a tightly held register and is executing well. All in all, one of the more interesting 5G pick and shovel plays I've been able to find. 

To give some idea of the addressable market, CEO Glenn Milnes recently estimated that the opportunity within the next 3-5 years from the top 15 utility providers in the US is perhaps around $225m. 

IKE is not exactly cheap in traditional terms and is incredibly illiquid, but this is a business that has the potential to capture much of its US market unchallenged in the next 5 years. IKE will very possibly have a dominant moat for years to come servicing the longer term thesis of utility pole maintenance, and other ‘capture adjacencies’ such as infrastructure for roads & rail.