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I'll need to look at the transcript. Yeah heard bit about 100M deal with private equity firm falling through.
Don't know how to reconcile the numbers and Amazon absence, despite what looks like Pando very active with Amazon Delivery Service hiring.
Also, seems there has to be some type of transaction occurring within a month, or by 12/15/23. How else is VERI going to come up with 55M unencumbered cash.
The Commitment Letter provides that the closing of the Term Loan is conditioned on, among other things, the Company having unrestricted cash and cash equivalents of at least $55 million immediately prior to the funding of the Term Loan on the closing date and satisfaction of certain other conditions. The Commitment Letter will expire on December 15, 2023 if the Term Loan has not been consummated on or prior to that date. The Lenders will select a third party to serve as the sole administrative agent, collateral agent, and documentation agent in connection with the Term Loan.
Where are they going to get $55M in unrestricted cash?
still have August investor presentation on website.
Pando must be helping Amazon hire Delivery drivers for free.
Why pay down the convertible notes with less attractive financing when the notes are not due until 2026
Think I'll go see the doctor too.
I don't have a subscription so can't read the article. Wonder if it has anything to do with Deloitte and Amazon Olympus.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/press-releases/deloitte-and-aws-announce-the-formation-of-olympus-global-industry-cloud-accelerator-fund.html
SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy also was at Ingram Micro for 7 years
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benxiang/
Both the 120M pando info, and todays PR new board member including the reiterating of 2024 disruptive growth comment, add confidence for me.
The Ingram Micro CFO brings a sign of outside credibility that was lacking on the board. The mysterious Fleming Meng that was hired as CIO, who we never hear about since the January PR. Fleming Meng came from Ingram Micro.
Yeah, we will see tomorrow. But anything near 120M has to include Amazon. So to me, it's either a sign that Amazon is back in a big way, or maybe he's just padding the numbers to look good. But that is quite a stretch if he is inflating.
Agree, Veri remains a standalone company
maybe strategic deal with Ingram Micro?
yes respectable addition.
Was thinking could get something after the bell, since they moved earnings up to the A.M.
Was that one of you guys buying at the close? lol
"dramatically expanding the footprint of our current customer install base. "
Could be new contract that takes into consideration Amazon using both Pando and Broadbean services.
Just speculating. But 12OM figure, (if accurate), may be the run rate going forward.
We have speculated that back in May, the reason Amazon reduced Pando usage could have been for negotiation purposes. Maybe now they have a contract secured.
would think it would have to assume Amazon revenue fully recovered. And then some. Think Pando did 57 million in 2022? . They did about 50M in 2021, and that was when Amazon was going strong for them all year. Broadbean supposed to be arounf 35M?
Even adding Broadbean revenues, that's a lot.
sent you an email. You can respond here, I just didn't want to post the link
Agree, I believe Amazon has their hand on the switch to determine whether Veritone survives or not.
But encouraging to see the Pando Amazon delivery job ads. Amazon could have dumped Pando altogether back in May, but they returned. Why.
Also regarding Pando, RS said back in August that "PandoLogic with Broadbean or Veritone HR solutions will leverage aiWARE to orchestrate cognitive, predictive and generative AI workflows across the talent acquisition ecosystem."
They drained most of what little free cash they had left in buying Broadbean. Would seem that integrating Broadbean with aiWare would be disastrous if aiWare not viable or ready for prime time. Why not integrate with a more reputable AI platform. And why Amazon using Pando again knowing integrated with aiWare.
7000 shares traded in first 15 minutes. There must be a leak. lol
Still say I think Veritone will surprise to the upside this week. Maybe in a big way.
They talk about disruptive growth in 2024. Talk about being a dominant player in enterprise AI, say they have the leading enterprise AI platform. RS says he has never been more confident. Well if disappointing on Wednesday, then both should be out the door. But in any case, something has to happen because they can't afford to disappoint any longer.
But like I say, since I have predicted it, that means he will stay.
Because I expect Veritone to announce some sort of outside investment into the company. Only other option is if they sell something.
But they obviously need capital, and my opinion, whoever gives them capital might require a different CFO to oversee it.
Also, they have hinted at this amazing transformation. MZ has been CFO for 3 years and stock is at 2 bucks and change. Don't think he has garnered a lot of confidence in the financial community. Assume they may want new CFO as part of that transformation.
Whatever happens this week, good or bad, it's going to be significant. Can't afford business as usual any longer. jmo
My predictions are nearly always wrong, but
I predict that Zemetra is out come Wednesday.
Nothing important, but just noticed these two comments from RS and MZ from last earnings call. Almost the exact same sentence.
Ryan Steelberg.
Notably, we are seeing meaningful traction with near 100% year-over-year growth for 2023 from new and existing government and regulated industry solutions or GRI customers that want to benefit from Veritone's industry-leading applications as evidenced by cloud-based Veritone Redact, which accelerates evidence redaction workflows.
Mike Zemetra:
We continue to see meaningful traction from new and existing commercial enterprise and GRI customers that want to benefit from Veritone's industry-leading applications hiring solutions and new offerings, such as cloud-based Veritone Redact, which accelerates evidence redaction workflows.
Everyone coming out with software that performs like aiWare. And Veritone keeps aiWare.com under wraps, even though you can self-serve sign up and start using it today.
another aiWare-like offering. This time from Snowflake
Snowflake Cortex is putting industry-leading ML and LLM models into the hands of all Snowflake users via intuitive experiences and serverless functions, so they can quickly and securely get more value from their enterprise data. There’s no need for specialized AI expertise or a complex infrastructure to manage. Further, Snowflake Cortex provides the building blocks to create custom AI apps in the Data Cloud in minutes. To learn more about how you can build with Snowflake Cortex, read more in Fast, Easy and Secure LLM App Development With Snowflake Cortex. And to request access to private preview features, reach out to your account team at Snowflake.
https://www.snowflake.com/blog/use-ai-snowflake-cortex/
VERI stock red in a sea of green.
It took a long time, but with the recent DOJ contract, I think Veritone has done a good job of getting their foot in the door with the DOJ. As far as monetization goes, if Veritone alone is unable to expand their business with the DOJ, it would seem to me that there should be a number of industry players out there that might be interested in what Veritone has accomplished with the DOJ and other federal agencies, as well as the recent legislative branch adopting Digital Media Hub,
Looks like many agencies have adopted Opexus' FOIAxpress which will has Veritone Redact integrated.
And the DOJ contract looks to be more aiWare specific, instead of just one application like redact. With aiWare, a variety of applications could fall under this contract. I think it opens the door for other opportunities for Veritone. jmo
I actually believe we are going to be pleasantly surprised next week.
the last four reviews have been brutal.
1.0
Oct 30, 2023
Dumpster Fire
Anonymous Employee
Former Employee
Recommend
CEO Approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Unlimited PTO. If you decide to work here, do the absolute bare minimum.
Cons
Senior leaders told us earlier this year that we would not receive any promotions, bonuses, cost of living adjustments, or raises for the year 2023. A month later, top performers received stock bonuses that wouldn't be available until November. This was after 2 rounds of layoffs by the way. Shortly after the stock bonuses were announced, a majority of those same top performers were furloughed for 10 weeks- and managers/directors had ZERO say in who was furloughed (and they found out about the furlough from the people who were furloughed). What happened next? Some of those furloughed folks were brought back and given promotions/raises, while the others waited in the dark for an update. The rest of those top performers ended up being laid off....and obviously won't receive their stock bonuses. The severance package was abysmal. To top it off, some of us never heard from anyone we worked with (managers, team members) after being laid off. What's left at Veritone: overworked former colleagues, *severe* underperformers, low morale, and fewer benefits
Advice to Management
I have nothing for you.
Makes sense to me that Veritone is in bed with someone like Deloitte, or maybe a combination of partners. Veritone is unknown in the HR world, small, and limited resources.
Veritone acquired Broadbean to expand HR offerings, when they haven't even been able to scale their own legacy products and tech. Makes no sense to me that Veritone would take this acquisition, spreading themselves thinner, depleting their cash, without having some idea of how HR solutions is going to scale.
But find it interesting that Amazon pulled the plug on Veritone back in May. Then Veritone went through with the Broadbean acquisition. And now Amazon is apparently back using Veritone HR services, at least according to Google searches. Looks to me like the notification by Amazon in May was harsh negotiation tactics.
They said 2023 a year of transformation, and strategically planned approach, including disciplined financial stewardship. I would say that the only way disciplined financial stewardship is being applied is if one or more partners involved. If Veritone all alone, then just a glance at their balance sheet tells you no disciplined financial stewardship. Has to be more to this, and should be announced next week. jmo
The Broadbean acquisition was quite the diversion. They spent most of their unencumbered cash to enhance their HR tech offering. That was money that could have gone into enhancing their aiWare platform, or building out their government business. Wash also money that could help them survive a recession. I know HR applies to all industries, but it was an unexpected acquisition at a time when aiWare's market was emerging. And now that acquisition has left Veritone's cash position in a vulnerable position. Only way it makes sense to me is if the acquisition was strategically planned with one or more strategic partners. If Veritone was all alone on the Broadbean acquisition as far as future plans, then I have no idea what they were thinking.
But will say, it now looks like Amazon is back. Chad said last year that Amazon and Veritone developing a new standard in HR tech. So maybe Broadbean was part of the plan.
bottom line, imo, is Veritone started out as a small company with no reputable investors. Actually started out being backed by a company that nobody liked, Acacia Research. As a small company wanted to be serving multiple verticals, all while continuing to develop an enterprise commercial grade AI platform. Just spread thin in all these different verticals as a small company. And again with no influential backing. It was always a long shot with Veritone. They at least had a reputation and experience in the advertising space. But went in cold with respect to the other verticals like government and energy, and with limited resources.
They may have some interesting IP. And maybe they are licensing aiWare capabilities to other tech companies. And now that the market for aiWare is here, next week we should expect material results from aiWare. One can plainly see that there is an interest now in a multiple AI model platform approach instead of point solutions. So really no excuse for aiWare not to be a competitive offering right now. So, we'll see if they have anything for us with respect to aiWare and aiWare.com. If not next week, then never, imo.
Also, when you consider the low valuation compared to the years of development, and amount Vertione has invested over the years, there should be no excuse for them to not have some sort of strategic deal next week. jmo
Heres another "aiWare-like" PR from Domino Data Labs No mention of "The Leader" in enterprise AI of course.
using the latest foundation models from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hugging Face, OpenAI, Meta, and others. Domino and NVIDIA are creating templates based on the NVIDIA NeMo framework and other NVIDIA AI software to help developers build, customize and deploy generative AI virtually anywhere.
Additional participants in Domino's AI Project Hub launch include industry leaders bringing the latest in applied vertical and domain-specific AI solutions, including:
AWS: Summarizing product feedback and generating email text for customer service use cases with Amazon Titan and Anthropic's foundation models, using LangChain to augment additional context.
Fiddler AI: Evaluating the robustness, correctness, and safety of LLMs and prompts in pre-production using Fiddler Auditor, the open-source robustness library for red-teaming of LLMs.
Deci.ai: Simplifying and accelerating the development of AI applications for code, image and text generation, chatbots and robust object detection using precise low-latency and high-throughput models.
Artefact: Generating structured data-driven digital marketing reports using automated, natural language insights.
KSM Technology Partners: Accelerating BioPharma discovery and development by automating complex, polyglot biostatistical and bioanalytical computations.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/domino-fall-2023-release-expands-platform-to-fast-track-all-enterprise-ai-including-genai-responsibly-301972425.html
waiting for the big announcement on Tuesday. That's why they moved earnings call to Wednesday morning.