SSNI Presentation

I started doing a little more research into the Silver Spring Networks after Saul recommended it just to learn what exactly they are doing and found some really good presentations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B27rtDXgs24
CEO Michael Bell presents the the SSNI technology to the IoT crowd. One thing that struck me was 99% uptime guarantee thanks to their independent wireless network mesh - pretty impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeArXRLBrg
A practical demonstration of their city lights.

This is the Saul stock I’m most excited about, hope they can continue executing well.

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Just a correction, here’s a version of the videos where you can actually read the slides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGMDjCXUegE

Why so many changes recently at top level including the COO and CFO?

Who are their competitors that do the same thing?

Millions of iot connections but still losing money this past quarter?

Why so many changes recently at top level including the COO and CFO?

No idea, maybe they’ll talk about it in the next conference call (though I doubt it).

Who are their competitors that do the same thing?

Largely industrial giants like IBM, GE, Siemens and ABB. Itron (ITRI) is the only specialized competitor I could find doing similar things.

SSNI was the only one providing these Plug-and-Play networked lights (and other devices) that I was able to find though the descriptions of the products the companies offer is often too generic to be sure.

Millions of iot connections but still losing money this past quarter?

A combination of things. They addressed some of that in their last conference call. They are investing heavily in their Starfish initiative in 2016 and are not expecting green numbers for that, they had a supplier disruption because of an earthquake - they expect the impact will be resolved by Q3 and lastly, one of their products had a large portion of the revenue coming in in Q2, missing the last earnings report. Their guidance for the whole year has been pretty optimistic though.

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One thing that struck me was 99% uptime guarantee

That sounds good at first glance, but it is really unacceptably low for any computer system or service. 99% uptime means that over three and a half days a year, the service could be down and still meet the criteria. Imagine the outcry if your ISP was down three full days in any given year. Three HOURS is too much.

99.99% uptime would be acceptable. 99% is rather pathetic, by almost any standard.

Tiptree, Fool One guide, no position in SSNI

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I think you are looking at it from the wrong point of view. He is not talking about the availability of the back end but rather the reachability of the nodes from the back end side.

If you compare it to an ISP - even if their servers are working, how many households are experiencing problems at any given time? Imagine that ISP guaranteeing that no households are going to experience any problems during 99% of the running time. Plus imagine all the connections being wireless!

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Why so many changes recently at top level including the COO and CFO?

COO isn’t a change at top level. It’s a new position. They’re expanding their management team.

By the way, thanks Stenlis, for those links. They added to my knowledge about what the company does.

Saul

Who are their competitors that do the same thing?

Largely industrial giants like IBM, GE, Siemens and ABB. Itron (ITRI) is the only specialized competitor I could find doing similar things.

Aclara is another company that specializes in AMR / AMI systems. I used to work at Aclara; our biggest competitor at the time was Itron. Silver Springs was around then, but their product offerings (at least on the AMI side) were not looked upon favorably. I believe that SSNI was reasonably new in that area, but I’m not positive.

Dave

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Hello Duma,

Millions of iot connections but still losing money this past quarter?

I believe that you are looking at GAAP reporting which is not favored by this forum. On an Non-GAAP adjusted basis SSNI has been profitable for the past 4 quarters.

Best regards,

Mike

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I like this company. Have done some reallocating recently. This company is one of the recipients.

Frank

Forgot to mention the links from stenlis.

Thanks you stenlis,

Frank