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With all of this volume the last 2 days, some outfit like an investment banker could have bought up 6 or 7 million shares and then through a prearranged block trade, sell them to Amazon. Wishful thinking I know, but since nobody in the past has been a holder of that many shares, it looks as if the seller of these block trades had to have accumulated these shares in these two high volume days. I don't know, but interesting.
When you have 40 plus million shares trading in two days, seems that some interesting things could happen. That's more than the float! And like you say, the price has not moved that much.
yeah I'm not familiar with charts and that kind of stuff, but look like some sort of prearranged block trades, but VERI doesn't have any holders with that many shares that I know of.
curious to know what those huge transactions are since nobody holds that many shares that I am aware of
6.7M block
6.3M share trade. Would like to see a nice 13D filing or more. Also, 10K should be coming out. Think tomorrow might be the deadline.
lol
All in. I think this explodes to the upside sometime between now and June. Just waiting for the all systems go announcement with AWS.
It does
CS lives and breathes aiWare, head aiWare evangelist. If you want to go into stealth mode on aiWare, get him out of the CEO position and have him 100% focused on aiWare roadmap development.
RS took over and said "we are going to focus on our ecosystem", and the rest will be pursued via partners. If AWS part of this strategic aiWare roadmap, we have no idea how many AWS partners are out there developing on aiWare, in multiple industries.
Job description says marketing with top 10 or 15 AWS partners.
Amazon/AWS has wrapped duct tape around Veritone's mouth for most if not all of 2023 and to date. jmo
It's insane. There is definitely an AI bubble going on, and Veritone thus far has not even tried to be part of it.
Airship AI went over 10 bucks yesterday. They were a 1.60, 10 days ago. Now 229M market cap with about 10M in revenues. They emerged last year pulling an AI platform out of nowhere and announced a deal with the DOJ giving no monetary value to the deal. Crazy.
agree
Yeah they financially strapped Veritone, and what does Veritone do? They go out and spend 52M on Broadbean, an acquisition in which they were clearly in no position to make.
The logical response to the above is that Veritone was trying to quickly replace the lost revenues from Amazon. I don't believe it. That would definitely be shooting from the hip, and they were in no financial position to take on this Broadbean acquisition including all the integration and reorganization required, while still trying to manage their other verticals.
I agree that it is a stretch, and speculation, but when you have Zemetra back in August talking about GTM plans in first half of 2024, and now we are seeing through job postings and Linkedin profiles talking about GTM with AWS. Has me believing this has all been strategically planned since the Broadbean acquisition. jmo
Reason why they've been silent on aiWare for so long. Reason why no details on Veritone Hire plans, not even a web page on Veritone Hire. For me, all points to AWS.
I think Amazon decision to reduce consumption of Pando, is again, due to the Veritone AWS plans. Want to make it look like they have no interest in Veritone. Don't want to tip off the competition.
quote from Zemetra back in August 2023
From a strategic perspective, Broadbean is integrated in over 100 applicant tracking systems with global customers across the EMEA, North America and APAC and is integrated with over 2,500 global job board providers accelerating our previous product roadmap by years. With the addition of our programmatic advertising solutions, we expect to realize significant revenue and cost synergies beginning in the first half of 2024 as we finalize our go-to-market and sales strategies.
And this quote from RS back in August
With the disciplined financial stewardship and a strategically planned approach, Veritone is well on its way to becoming a long-term dominant player in the enterprise AI field.
I believe the purchase of Broadbean was part of the GTM strategy with AWS. I believe the aiWare roadmap concerns AWS
where does it say that. Actually makes sense to me because the recent round of layoffs did not start until January.
Director Corporate Development and Strategy just got promoted. Once again, AWS. ties in with the new marketing job postings
Senior Director, Corporate & Business Development
Mar 2024 - Present · 1 mo
Hybrid
Expanded role to include corporate development responsibilities, business development (lead partner GTM with AWS), and GTM strategy development / execution for our AI Solutions Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/codea/
Hard for me to know much about Veritone Hire and what they are doing with various partners. All I basically know about it is Pando and Broadbean. They seem tightlipped on the AI or aiWare aspect of it.
They really need to come out with dedicated website or webpage for Veritone Hire. Another mystery why they have not yet
I think basically when they say copilot, they mean that there is a box or interface where you can use generative AI along with whatever software or app you are dealing with. But yeah, I believe Microsoft is the first where I heard the term copilot
Veritone just posted this on Linkedin
Truly a lucky day 🍀 Take your recruitment game to the next level with Veritone Hire's groundbreaking collaboration with iCIMS coming later this year. 🌟 Discover SOON how our integration is transforming applicant experiences, streamlining operations, and unlocking unparalleled hiring efficiency with iCIMS Copilot. More information below ⤵
ICIMS also released this PR today:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/icims-launches-new-genai-powered-recruiting-assistant-advancing-its-longstanding-artificial-intelligence-program-302087482.html
And why still no March investor presentation
Read through that job description again.
Veritone and its partnership with AWS offers customers hundreds of AI engines with capabilities including: transcription, translation, object recognition, OCR, face recognition, text sentiment, geolocation, visual moderation, audio fingerprinting, scene detection, speaker separation, orchestration, text to speech and more.
Interesting that usually Veritone would say aiWare offers customers hundreds of AI engines. Saying "Veritone and its partnership with AWS" implies partnership with AWS on aiWare. Speculation I know.
But everything about that job posting refers to AWS partners.
Role will also be responsible to keep Veritone’s corporate profile & competencies updated on top 15 AWS partner websites or microsites
Up to now, it's rare to find Veritone listed on any company partner page. Now they will be listed on top 15, and implies they have more partners. And what is making all these AWS partners wanting to partner with Veritone? And why so far have they not marketed with all these AWS partners? And why say nothing about this during yesterday's earnings call. Just seems like some sort of deal might get announced. And might be the catalyst for why they say more revenue and cost synergies to come in 2nd half 2024.
And what's with the 23 million shares traded today.
on second look, maybe not million plus share trades but several between 500k and 900k
looks like there were several million plus share block trades in that run-up. Could we see an interesting 13g filing soon?
I agree 100% All the data that Veritone has ingested into an AI platform for such a small company. Should be major opportunities if they can execute
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.