Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
It's always been said on cc's that VirTra will be a subcontractor. Seems to me like the front runner for this would be Microsoft.
HUD<>Mag ratios:
Our best source of info continues to be this old Statement of Objectives doc. https://uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Army-AR-Objectives.pdf
SiVT stands for SQUAD Immersive Virtual Trainer. And most STP's also talked about doing things at a Squad, Platoon, Company, and Battalion level. So I don't think we should be thinking there is some magic formula for HUD<>kits. We should be thinking in terms of squads. A squad consists of somewhere between 4-10 soldiers where each role has certain weapon(s). Example given in the SOO above. Using that ratio and pricing from publicly available VirTra pricing, one is looking at ~$215k/squad in recoil kits and magazines give or take a bit plus pricing discounts. We also don't know how many squads that receive HUDs will get their own training gear. Can 20 squads share 10 squads-worth of training gear? Unknown.
We do know the number of HUDS supposedly being ordered and from that we can put together some variable expectations. $5m/month seems a reasonable guess and one could also argue the upside is closer to $8m/month as production ramps later in '22/'23! But there's too much unknown to really pin it down further than this.
Some reasons to pare back these expectations are:
- Army is known to use multiple suppliers. Are we certain VirTra would be the only supplier?
- Recoil kits were already provided for STP's. When will the Army need net-new quantities?
- how big of a volume discount would VirTra be willing to give to get the award?
- We have no idea what sort of opex will come from ramping recoil kits. There might be efficiencies gained from the larger factory, but maybe that's offset by more headcount.
MVP
Thanks for sharing the NMSO link, Teeroy! Now if only someone can help us find the France RFP, we can see what other follow on opportunities might come from the recent $1.3M European order.
Matthews, NC ~ $120k
https://www.matthewsbeacon.com/news/2021/10/11/morning-minute
"The Board of Commissioners will vote whether purchasing the simulator, which will cost the department just under $120,000 in Federal Forfeiture funds, should be approved"
From the linked Agenda,
Georgia Department of Corrections... ~$600k+
https://ssl.doas.state.ga.us/gpr/eventDetails?eSourceNumber=46700-GDC0000979&sourceSystemType=ps
"The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) is seeking a vendor to provide Law Enforcement Use of Force Simulators that meets all the equipment, supplies, software capability, and needed mobility and space requirements note in the attached Detailed Specifications. Simulator systems shall include (1) Fixed Simulator, (6) mobile simulators, and all the necessary equipment required to install and operate the systems.
GDC is also interested in obtaining the cost of an Annual Service Plan which would be considered after Warranty expires.
Lastly, vendors are also encouraged to submit a proposal to buy-back (4) Meggitt simulators currently owned by GDC."
From a QA doc "The specifications used in the solicitation were based on the VirTra V-180 Simulator System and accessories. This equipment was identified by our end user as meeting all of our requirements for the system. However, we are not requiring a specific make or model and to promote competition, the bid is open for any system that can meet the minimum requirements specified."
From the Detailed Specs doc "Virtual Reality headsets are not acceptable because of COVID 19 sanitation issues and the fact that the headsets will not hold up to 7,000-10,000 students a year. Simulators must be able to fully operate without headsets. "
----
Looks to be ~$600k+ worth of equipment to be ordered (1 V180, 6 VST-PRO, 20+ weapons/kits, 50+ magazines, 8 threatfire)
I personally think VirTra is typically very precise with their verbiage like this, so maybe you're right. I hope you are and we see another announcement for France sales in a couple days/weeks.
Would be great to find the RFP associated with this sale.
also those options expired a few days after they were exercised. So ¯\_(?)_/¯
Also it's $10k out of his nearly $4M holdings. Who cares.
> Still no direct link to confirm the sim order is from France though.
This from the youtube link combined with all of the @Virtra_france instagram posts makes me pretty confident it's France and not a different country. But you're right, there's no way to be 100% certain.
---
> Hopefully GMP will update their website in the near future with the Virtra systems....
Whatever works for them. I could imagine them already having relationships with military/police and not needing to put specific products on their website. Not a big deal as long as they continue to sell successfully!
seems like they're the link to this European order. Would love it if someone was able to track down the specific RFP. Anybody speak French?
MAAC also turning it in to a zombie attack as part of a halloween charity event
https://app.hauntpay.com/events/MAACabre
" MAACabre Haunted Attraction - VIP and VIRTRA Zombie Attack "
---
Indiana passed a mandatory training law earlier this year and i believe MAAC is one of the few (only?) facilities in the state with VirTra. There are other simulators provided by competitors, though.
your quote specifically sounds like STE-LTS to me.
----
But in that same article, glad to see SIVT is in motion!
"In the meantime, some soldiers are training with the first version, with more widespread deployment of the iteration anticipated in 2022. Known as the Squad Immersive Virtual Trainer, or SIVT, the version offers an accessible way for soldiers to train using a fighting goggle that mixes simulated images with soldiers’ view of their surroundings."
Thanks for sharing Teeroy!!
no way to know.
Either when the army wants the world to know about it (it seems they don't want to disclose any IVAS details) or revenues start to flow in to VirTra (over the next couple of quarters). Company can't hide revenues, so just a matter of being patient.
Air Force 61st Security Force Squadron - Upgrade to V300
LA Air Force Base seems to be purchasing an upgrade to their V180 with a V300 & a 3 year warranty. Includes threat fire devices.
No idea delivery timeline.
Source ---->
RFI from Sept 9 -- https://sam.gov/opp/d6750faa747e4c1abcacbb55e9921ff4/view
Notice from Sept 21 -- https://sam.gov/opp/5af61da510774ce2bec2b366508f28f4/view
At current book of business inclusive of some IVAS SiVT, it's not unfair to say that they're mostly fairly valued around 12ish.
Current, near , and mid term opportunities are plentiful, though, which could all easily 2x or 3x the company by 2023-2024.
At today's price, this company is a different type of investment than it was 6 months ago when DD gave indication of IVAS SiVT being very likely and it being immediately underpriced. Now it's an investment in the company executing for 2+ years.
A bit of context:
In July/August, there were two opportunities posted to sam.gov
1) Soldier Virtual Trainer (info only) - https://sam.gov/opp/67edca669a1245ab82f0015e1f3648b0/view
This SVT Info Only requirements said SVT would require either instrumented weapons (drop in kits) or simulated weapons.
2) Request for Information - Soldier Virtual Training (SVT) - https://sam.gov/opp/8ac50b97de234ea2b9a1b97ad69dc4c3/view
This was the official RFI, again, stating requirements for SVT to use instrumented weapons (drop in kits) or simulated weapons.
----
Now yesterday this SVT RFI#2 (https://sam.gov/opp/531d5cb6ef4747da87a52bfa908a09c1/view) was issued and it's specific to instrumented weapons only. My question is, if the prior RFI already included the requirement for instrumented weapons or simulated weapons, why did the Army release this RFI#2 essentially repeating itself? My thoughts are:
1) The Army wants to use instrumented weapons and too many responses to RFI#1 included simulated weapons.
2) The Army is not happy with current instrumented weapon capabilities (i.e. VirTra's) and wants more info.
I lean more towards #1 and less #2 because from what I can find in market research, nobody really does instrumented weapons and simply does simulated weapons due to the added capabilities available.
Why would the Army need to explicitly issue another RFI for drop in kits? Are they hoping to get more companies to submit info on drop in kits as opposed to simulated weapons?
VirTra is the only one that can currently do #11 & #16 of the requirements as listed in the RFI (as per: https://twitter.com/VirtraSystems/status/1430971869092622346)
#11: During training, bolt locks to the rear indicating empty magazine
#16: Injects/induces simulated malfunctions remotely for trainee to respond during runtime
also of interest is there are only 8 days to submit under this RFI. Kind of shows (IMO) that they are looking for something specific or this might just be a formality
This is an image from VirTra's investor presentation (https://27prkp2qlaco3ozkibp3k391-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/VirTra-VTSI-IR-Presentation-August-2021.pdf). The image is the same as what was used back in late 2018, so it's seems not fully up to date, but a good base.
From what I can see on the map, these middle east countries are/were VirTra customers:
---Map---
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emerates
Israel
Turkey
Bahrain (maybe?)
---Flag---
Pakistan
Is there any history here? Seems there have been many countries in the Middle East which have been customers for at least a few years. Why use the term “finally?”
OT
StoryTrading, BreakoutInvestors, and in general Mark Gomes (who is a part of both of the above plus his blog) are the communities I enjoy being a part of. StoryTrading is $30/month, BreakoutInvestors is free but does require email to sign up.
StoryTrading has been following SMSI since early 2018 and I personally believe our group knew more about the company and its prospects and progress than just about anybody else in the market; most definitely retail investors. BreakoutInvestors and StoryTrading share a lot of the same collaborators, so both platforms have good info on the company and I think we're still ahead of the curve on this stock (although institutional ownership has gone from 10% to 50% from 2018 until now -- https://fintel.io/so/us/smsi -- so maybe the story is already well understood in private circles).
StoryTrading community is IMO a more day-to-day conversation/research type of platform in it's current state (IMO like stocktwits but doing research and not nonsense) whereas BreakoutInvestors, again IMO, tends to be a more "only post when you have research to share" type of platform. To each their own but the folks in both of them are top notch IMO
i think you're right that it'll come but i'm not convinced it'll be q3. If i'm right that deferred revenue is growing because of STP orders (3.5m for STP4 in Q2'21 + 1.5m for STP3 in Q4'20 + 0.5m in Q4'19) then it stands to reason that Army is not paying IVAS bills until, possibly, after the prototype phase is finished.
I think this phase should be complete after the Aug/Sept event and they get the "production" green light, but with everything happening so close to quarter end, it's hard to really make a confident guess. One could argue that it'll take more than a week or two to get a green light and therefore maybe the decision won't be made until Q4. On the other hand, budget for FY21 probably can't be spent in Q4 (federal FY22) and therefore maybe payments are made in Q3. Then you have to think about when VirTra would get paid as they are a subcontractor and not receiving funds directly from the the Army.
If revs aren't 6m+ in Q3, here are the numbers I'll be tracking to ensure we're still on track for a record Q4:
* Deferred Revenue - Short Term
* Inventory
* Machinery and equipment
* Accounts Receivable
* Headcount
so much positivity about management the past few days! What's going to happen if they don't execute this time... (knock on wood)
Can you provide links about #1? the 10-q says:
"The Company leases approximately 37,729 rentable square feet of office and warehouse space from an unaffiliated third party for our corporate office, manufacturing, assembly, warehouse and shipping facility located at 7970 South Kyrene Road, Tempe, Arizona 85284. In addition, the Company leases approximately 5,131 rentable square feet of space for our machine shop located at 7910 South Kyrene Road, within the same business complex as our main office"
The writing is on the wall
and has been since the raise in March.
this doc (Proposal template in https://sam.gov/opp/2b8c333f70894f769a5bf2bacdc784d2/view) was simply a pricing sheet, no? Why couldn't CBP order multiple of each of these "items"?
I'm not well versed in gov contracts, so happy to hear other opinions.
it's my understanding that weapons with recoil kits will communicate with STE via some sort of radio frequency and not lasers. Obviously VirTra's recoil kits, from what we know publicly, do not have this capability. Curious if you're aware of any hardware that could be attached to weapons that could be solving this? MantisX, which VirTra tweeted about yesterday, seems like it could possibly solve for some of these data requirements. Any opinions or thoughts on the topic would be great!
These are the bill’s I was referring to
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=165174453
HR4505 is appropriations for funding and HR4431 talks about mandatory training.
“The Committee therefore directs the Secretary to work with the Attorney General and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers to implement improved, mandatory training on these topics for all federal law enforcement officers, along with the development of related standards that can be applied in hiring and performance assessments. The Secretary should also consider establishing incentives through the State Homeland Security Grant Program and the Urban Area Security Initiative for states and local jurisdictions to adopt the standards. These training requirements and standards should be based on the related provisions in H.R. 1280, as passed by the House of Rep-resentatives in March 2021. “
Ardly, my understanding of your links is that the police training act was only proposed and never adopted and that is also evidenced by the above, more recent bill, stating that mandatory training laws at the state level is not likely to happen. instead the federal government will incentivize states to adopt these standards in exchange for money.
I'll be attending. I think StoryTrading is planing on releasing a recording of the call sometime after the fact on their youtube
Crazy that these funds didn't even bother holding through earnings. They bought on/around the huge volume day and sold by June. Nothing to read into here with the knowledge that we have. Someone should reach out and ask them about their position!
"Mondial Protection France - VIRTRA Distributor"
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6833723050471510016/
Is this the European distributor VirTra partnered with in 2020?
Pretty boring earnings call where we didn't learn too much, IMO. The company simply continued to execute, got the benefit of a lumpy FLETC order, and numbers look okay. Business continues to execute and tailwinds from federal funding, military, and international should all start to hit in 2022. So I'll be buying on any dips.
A couple interesting notes from the call:
1) This was the shortest prepared remarks I think we've seen VirTra give and it also felt like it had the most fluff and least substance. Unfortunately, this aligns with the fact that there haven't been many large government orders coming through in the past 3 quarters, there being forced silence on military, etc. A lot of commentary was also rehashing things we already know or were stated on prior calls. Cash is for large opportunities, hiring we saw in June, ERP signals growth, subprime contractor for military, business is expanding. I feel like I learned very little.
2) In continuing the trend since Q4 call, there was a lot of strong language "we are providing for the military" and not "we are trying to provide to the military."
3) Backing out federal/governemnt orders, bookings in q4'20 and q1'21 continue to be pretty large outliers at 5.5M and 7.3M which q2 did not match. Essentially this quarter's bookings were in line with what we were seeing in late 2019 and into 2020. Continued execution.
4) they purchased 400k of "machinery and equipment" this quarter. They've done very little since 2017 with this line item, so another sign that they are ramping up production.
5) Deferred revenue short-term jumped $3.3M Q/Q and to it's highest ever 7.9M. idk if this is a coincidence or what but it's worth pointing out that my estimated STP4 revenue was $3.4M. Either way this points to a pretty big revenue windfall at some point within the next year.
----
Personally I was pretty confident in STP4 revenue hitting this quarter and ended up losing a fair bit on Aug options. Was a calculated bet that I'd probably take again if I had the chance.
StoryTrading, by the way, is simply a community of investors who are trying to understand if companies are worth investing in. the group meets with company execs just like analysts do. I think this is just part of the CEO's job to take these calls.
Let's see how this quarter goes as I'll follow up next Q.
My point was at least VirTra's board is people interested and passionate about the industry. You might be right about their skillsets and value. And while I question your verbiage, I appreciate your perspective.
Btw meant this in response to fish
BoD could always be worse.
https://www.inveristraining.com/team -- Who's board would you rather have? InVeris's or VirTra's?
Ha thanks but I'm fine letting the board continue doing their thing! I think they are doing quite well! We can circle back in Q2 and EOY 2022 and check in then though. I'm betting, and if y'all have as many shares as you say, so are you, that by that point in time, the stock will be performing quite nicely.
Curious what this group thinks they can accomplish as a board member though! What are some suggestions?
From last cc in response to a sequential growth question:
Earnings estimates?
Has anyone put forth any effort into trying to estimate this quarters earnings? What are your expectations? would love to collaborate with someone who had!
google search the below then filter to "Last week" or "Last month"
`"virtra" -site:virtra.com -vtsi`
Also add on `filetype:pdf` into a second search and find pdf docs on top of web pages
Great find! I posted yesterday (https://stocktwits.com/sharpchicity) about mandatory training and the $42M JAG funding, but other comments in your doc about de-escalation were not in the ones i found. A very conservative estimate, with > $70M being provided towards grants for de-escalation training, might mean at least $10M goes to VirTra who are the leaders in the space. And if you think that training will continue beyond 2022, this might be a year after year tailwind! At only ~$20M in revenue, huge growth opportunity to go along with the military orders.
"Technical Assistance to Law Enforcement Agencies.—The Com-mittee recommends $15,000,000 for grants that will support: (1) the cost of assisting the State or Indian Tribe in which the law en-forcement agency is located in complying with the reporting re-quirements described in section 224 of H.R. 1280; (2) the cost of es-tablishing necessary systems required to investigate and report in-cidents as required under subsection (b)(4); (3) public awareness campaigns designed to gain information from the public on use of force by or against local and tribal law enforcement officers, includ-ing shootings, which may include tip lines, hotlines, and public service announcements; and (4) use of force training for law en-forcement agencies and personnel, including training on de-esca-lation, implicit bias, crisis intervention techniques, and adolescent development"
"Community Support for Victims of Hate Crime.— In addition to the Matthew Shepard grants, the Committee recommends
$30,000,000 for grants awarded to community-based organizations that will further community-based strategies for conflict resolution and community empowerment and education. Grants will be pro-vided to community-based organizations and civil rights groups to implement and facilitate educational classes and community serv-ices for defendants convicted of hate crimes directly related to the community harmed by the offense; culturally competent and lin-guistically appropriate public education campaigns on the collection of data and public reporting of hate crimes; safety ambassadors to escort vulnerable community members in public places; in-language support for victims and/or surviving families of hate crimes, includ-ing mental health support; provide upstander, de-escalation trainings in multiple languages; and other community-based strate-gies deemed appropriate for communities of color and other vulner-able and historically disadvantaged communities. "
"Community Policing Development (CPD).—The Committee rec-ommends $35,000,000 for CPD, for competitive grants provided di-rectly to law enforcement, including training programs. Of this amount, (1) $15,000,000 is for officer training in de-escalation tech-niques, of which no less than $4,000,000 is for grants to regional de-escalation training centers that are administered by accredited institutions of higher education and offer de-escalation training cer-tified by a national certification program; (2) $5,000,000 is for as-sisting agencies with gaining accreditation to ensure compliance with national and international standards covering all aspects of law enforcement policies, procedures, practices, and operations, of which no less than $1,500,000 is to be provided for small and rural law enforcement agencies for this purpose; (3) $3,000,000 is for the CPD Microgrants program, which provides funding for demonstra-tion and pilot projects that offer creative ideas to advance crime fighting, community engagement, problem solving, and organiza-tional changes to support community policing; (4) $2,000,000 is for grants to support tolerance, diversity, and anti-bias training pro-grams offered by organizations with well-established experience training law enforcement personnel and criminal justice profes-sionals; and (5) $10,000,000 for grants to States to embed mental and behavioral health services with law enforcement, including training programs. The Committee directs the Department to pro-vide a status update on the program within 60 days of the enact-ment of this Act."
Will reiterate that it would be GREAT to keep track of these in a consolidated location (e.g. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AbQ5LFvHxAZE1uqDjE_xZad9yHPzTFYe3_xk77RfAUs/edit#gid=0).
By comparing usaspending.gov vs bookings (see image below), it seems that military and installs are the most lumpy part of the business whereas bookings have shown relatively consistent growth. If we're able to track a good chunk of LE wins, we should have a pretty good idea of bookings (LE + gov spending) and therefore a rough idea of revenue & earnings.
> Note: the above is simply sliced only on govspending to determine gov/non-gov split. If a military order came through and wasn't on govspending, it'd be misclassified as non-gov in this chart
From what we've found and included in the spreadsheet, Q2 only had ~1-2M of LE bookings and 1.8M of gov spending. Ignoring anything IVAS related, we might not see a great Q in terms of bookings. COVID reopenings maybe hint towards likely higher revenues and therefore a realization of the evergrowing backlog.
No idea, but I bought a bit more at $6.91 this morning and it's the first I've bought since upper 5's. I'm expecting much better than analyst estimates for Rev & EPS on Q2 earnings. Downside is if there is no additional military work booked in Q2, it's possible that bookings & backlog both start to trend downwards.
We've found at least 5 STEP contracts come through in the past few months which makes me hope that VirTra will be changing their reporting this Q and we'll be able to separate recurring vs non-recurring revenues.