Talked to Dave last week, Give him a call about your concern
Hi Barneyj44 I am the investor relations rep for Quarterhill; thanks for your email. I thought Id give you a bit of a broad overview of ongoing activity at Quarterhill, both on the M&A side and also within our existing portfolio. Our M&A team continues to work hard toward building-out our pipeline and closing transactions. On our upcoming Q3 conference call, we will update some of our deal-flow and pipeline metrics, but in Q2 alone we did due diligence on more than 70 potential M&A targets, engaged actively with more than ten, which resulted in three LOIs; a considerable amount of activity. In some cases, for transactions that get to the late stage, valuations remain higher than we like, and we are willing to walk away if we cant align the transaction with our operational and financial criteria. We believe that this discipline, to only say yes to the right deal, will serve shareholders well in the long-run as a successful aggregation-type strategy requires that discipline. Re Intrynsic, that name has come up before, though I cant say whether we took a cursory look or a deep dive; regardless, I will pass along the name to our team. We understand, and feel, the pressure to get a transaction done, but it will only hurt our negotiating position if we go public with self-imposed timelines to complete a deal. Four tech companies have dominated software M&A in Canada over the past ten years Constellation, Enghouse, Open Text and Descartes and in Doug Parker (our CEO), we have the person who spent those years building and ultimately leading the M&A charge at one of those firms (Open Text). He is a M&A professional who understands the playbook required to successfully execute this type of strategy, but it is a strategy that will play out over the medium-to-long-term, as it has at those companies. In the meantime, in addition to sourcing and pursuing M&A targets, Doug has also been working with our existing portfolio companies to enhance their performance. Early in Q3 of this year, we made some changes at IRD, which will result in annual costs savings of $2.2 million, but we believe will also better position the company for the future having made some leadership changes. We like what we see at VIZIYA and are working with them to develop strategies and tactics to capitalize on the opportunities they have in their pipeline they are somewhat uniquely positioned in a partner role with both SAP and Oracle. On the Wilan front, the $145.2 million jury award in the Apple case is obviously a huge positive for our business and collecting those funds is a key priority for the business now. We expect an appeal from Apple, but nothing is official yet. We are well-prepared to see that type of process through to completion and feel very strongly about our position. Another key priority will be looking at how we can leverage that outcome to generate licenses with other OEMs that may also be infringing on those patents. That work to identify those situations is ongoing. If you have any further questions or comments, you can always feel free to call me at your convenience. I know it can be hard waiting for a transaction to be completed, but this is a strategy that has been proven to deliver over the long-term, and Doug has demonstrated in his career an ability to execute on that front. Regards, Dave Dave Mason, CFA dave.mason@loderockadvisors.com D: (416) 247-9652 | M: (416) 985-3647
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