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While we know Veritone has not scaled, they do have their foot in the door on several different fronts with M&E, Gov, HR. Just think a strategic partner that can help scale could make a killing while helping Veritone scale. The right deal could really be a win win. Just need management to EXECUTE
yeah big blocks. 1.4 M shares so far
Yeah up 30%, maybe like the cost cutting and prospects of a transaction in the near term.
Agree. When Veritone secured that "beautiful piece of paper" 200 million in debt, then Amazon pulled the plug, sent Veritone scrambling. Veritone just did not give enough consideration of the risks of Amazon when signing up for that convertible note.
I also believe now that a big contributor to problems consummating meaningful incentivized strategic partnerships stemmed from the ego of Chad Steelberg and his belief that he and his aiWare are God's gift to mankind. I think that threw a wrench into any aiWare or Pandologic plans with Amazon. RS and the rest of the Veritone Board had to get him out of the picture. I don't think there is a friendly relationship between RS and CS
Just my opinion, but the majority of their problems with revenue growth concern Amazon. With the purchase of Pandologic and maybe to a lesser extent other aiWare or other vertical initiatives with Amazon, Veritone set themselves up to be at the mercy of Amazon.
I have always said that nobody is going to help you scale your technology unless there is clear revenue incentive for them. Amazon is in the position to play hardball with a little pissant like Veritone. Veritone just has never had the backing of reputable and well established players. They went public with backing from Acacia Research, and largest outside shareholder no-name Banta. Nobody that has the ability to scale, is incentivized to scale Veritone.
So Veritone made their bed and bought revenues via Pandologic, the majority of those revenues controlled by Amazon. Now, as Veritone struggles with their balance sheet and still no reputable backing, at the complete mercy of Amazon or others to play nice.
All that being said, its up to Veritone to create a situation that is enticing for someone like Amazon. It appears that Veritone is trying. Looks like they are going all in on AWS. I think when Veritone alludes to even more cost and revenue synergies to be realized beyond the reorg, they are referring to some type of strategic tie-up. But they are at the mercy of whatever strategic partner that is going to help them realize these additional cost and revenue synergies.
They say additional cost and revenue synergies are possible in the second half of this year. I believe that is if they can close any strategic partner deal or deals. jmo
They stopped talking to analysts/investors last year. They had planned to have an investor day something called AI in Action, mid year 2023, but cancelled it along with a couple other investor conferences. This was right around the time they bought Broadbean and got word from Amazon that they will be decreasing consumption.
some quotes from the call
We're seeing an explosion
of demand for Veritone’s AI applications, aiWARE platform and solution capabilities, with the largest
qualified pipeline on record, and we are continuing to accelerate our innovation and development
pipeline to adapt and extend our AI capabilities to serve our markets.
Again, I want to reiterate that we are projecting profitability as early
as the fourth quarter of 2024 and in full year fiscal 2025.
With respect to our balance sheet and debt position today, we have near term plans to vastly improve
our liquidity position on a non-dilutive basis. We will continue to update you on further progress on this
initiative when we announce Q1 earnings in May 2024.
but have intentionally omitted from our 2024 guidance any future cost and
revenue synergies expected in the second half of 2024 until they are realized.
Moreover,
10
we are in late agreement stages with various federal agencies on larger enterprise level
arrangements, which if executed in the first half of 2024 could accelerate this growth projection
even further
and all this talk of "disruptive" growth is either:
1. Lying
or
2. They are anticipating some catalyst like a deal to put them in the position for "disruptive" growth, and it has not yet materialized. jmo
Despite lingering uncertainty across financial and consumer markets, Veritone has made significant strides in streamlining operations, and we look to the start of 2024 as an inflection point in our growth trajectory. - Ryan Steelberg - 11/08/23
You just can't say BS like that and not follow through. It's kinda hard on the stock price.
They threw a couple of carrots out there in the conference call. But investors and analysts have had enough of carrots.
Like you say, hope. All that remains for me is the hope of some type of strategic deal.
No. Only one analyst from UBS asked a question. The rest of the analysts have given up.
they haven't even updated the investor presentation on their website.
Then if they sell the advertising business, that would send the revenue guidance down considerably.
What they need is deal with Amazon.
this is a company that should have been sold to someone back in 2021. CS was delusional about aiWare prospects. It remains a company that should be part of something else. Don't have the resources to be competitive on all these different fronts by themselves. They are the ones that got themselves into the mess of having to downsize and restructure. That being said, the earnings report could have been a lot worse considering their self imposed predicament. jmo.
I will have to review the transcript but you are right, overall disappointing. Couple things stood out however. MZ said something about a transaction that would substantially improve our balance sheet in near term, and will comment on it by the May earnings call. Also said something about chance of significant increase in revenues but not including in guidance until they materialize.
Just can't believe they can't comment on aiWare roadmap or developments. Don't comment on Veritone Hire strategy and go to market.
First Quarter 2024
Revenue is expected to be in the range of $30.5 million to $31.5 million, as compared to $30.3 million in the first quarter of 2023.
Full Year 2024
Revenue is expected to be in the range of $134.0 million to $142.0 million, as compared to $127.6 million for fiscal 2023.
That must be the inflection point in growth trajectory. And disruptive growth.
now it's off again. wtf
it's back on there again.
appears that way. I see they already removed one of the new marketing positions.
RS posted that on Linkedin and it was liked by Director, Business Programs, Public Safety & Justice, Worldwide
Microsoft. why
I think it's obvious they are going to announce some kind of enhanced partnership with Amazon, and this job description for VP includes HR. So at least the job description ties HR tech with Amazon, which could be significant just to get the Amazon hiring revenues back
New job posted
VP, Vertical & Growth Marketing
Once again, only mentions AWS.
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=3853534903&f_C=6442206%2C4791398&geoId=92000000&origin=COMPANY_PAGE_JOBS_CLUSTER_EXPANSION&originToLandingJobPostings=3839481255%2C3837211985%2C3846688513%2C3849629948%2C3809348430%2C3846381832%2C3853534903%2C3849635120%2C3720073847
who knows. And I believe "The Job Network" was powered by Pandologic, and even back when Pando was called Realmatch. But the PR says it's a "relaunch" of "The Job Network"
But also based on that job posting, appears that they are going to get aggressive on aiWare marketing. So have no idea why they have been waiting.
Based on the recent job posting, you appear to be right on aiWare remaining in house. And they have done nothing to support the stock price in well over a year. Didn't even try to promote aiWare during that time.
On another note, I continue to follow anything on Deloitte CortexAI, and AIOPS.D, which is supposedly built with CortexAI. I've seen them post various articles, videos, etc which mention CortexAI or AIOPS.D every so often up to February of this year.
Now this post from 2 days ago suggests that they have scrapped CortexAI.
Among the Deloitte initiatives she has helped shepherd are the Smart Factory, ConvergeProsperity™, and the former CortexAI platform, which incorporated analytics and AI as core differentiators.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/consulting/articles/top-women-in-AI.html
brutal
I agree, why wait for earnings.
The recent job posting hints that they are going to start heavily marketing aiWare. Why haven't they been marketing aiWare before? They say the brands Broadbean and Pandologic will eventually disappear, and become Veritone Hire. Well why does it take them 9 months to do this. Just seems that with aiWare and Veritone Hire, they have kept their plans secret for some reason. So I expect them to disclose all this on Tuesday.
But delaying the public marketing of aiWare and Veritone Hire plans, has me thinking one or more strategic partners involved.
Veritone apparently has all these partnerships with ADP, Linkedin, Bullhorn, etc, and has been 9 months since buying Broadbean, yet still doesn't have any site or web page for Veritone Hire. Another reason why I think we see some type of strategic deal along with this earnings report.
Right, and MSFT Azure marketplace still lists Veritone applications.
https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps?search=veritone&page=1
The question is why does the new IDEMS suite only mention AWS?
https://unlock.veritone.com/resource-library-idems-overview?_gl=1*1l8pe71*_gcl_au*MjExMDgyOTkzMi4xNzA5MzAxNzcw
Veritone must have a number of police department customers that run on Azure. aiWARE supposed to be cloud agnostic, and one would think Veritone would want to get that point across, as they did in the past. So the new IDEMS suite, curious that it only mentions AWS. Going to be an interesting earnings call, and who knows, might get news before Tuesday afternoon.
Hopefully. We will see in 3 days.
Big Bear getting crushed on earnings report.
It looks like they are going to start marketing aiWARE heavily. They haven't done that since RS took over.
Planning and execution of aiWARE webinars (start to finish), blogs, co-branded presentations, metrics/reporting, and email campaigns highlighting the joint value proposition of each specific top partner.
Could be, but Why do they only mention AWS on the Veritone Investigate page?
Back in the third quarter of last year, they launched Veritone Evidence. They have now switched the name to Veritone Investigate. And that only mentions AWS as a cloud provider. Why no Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud?
https://www.veritone.com/applications/investigate/
It also got put on the AWS Marketplace this week.
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-noraedtsxtb5k?sr=0-1&ref_=beagle&applicationId=AWSMPContessa
I find it interesting that it mentions partnership with AWS. But not Azure or Google cloud. And yes financial services interesting. It doesn't mention recruiting but it mentions working with ATS Applicant Tracking Systems. So looks like the position does deal with HR tech issues. And with focus on only AWS, could be something.
But just AWS. Could be a deal coming up. A lot of AWS employees liked the Veritone Dalet posts on Linkedin.
I may come to that conclusion by March 12. But still think they will have something significant in a week.
Airship AI went up over 200% today.
I don't find anything on their AI platform predating 2023. They must have just slapped together a platform and had the DOJ adopt it, all without even having to go through Fedramp process. They surpassed Veritone in market cap today, and only have 10M in revenues.
Veritone simply does not care about their share price. They could be caught up in this AI hype if they wanted to, or at least have the stock price higher than it is now. They don't care about it.
In this market, Veritone is the shareholders worst enemy. A monkey as CEO could have had VERI stock higher going into earnings. Needs to change March 12 in a big way.