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[umiak]

ANY- Lots of interesting observations from longs on ANY board regarding Sphere 3D/Microsoft partnership presentation to financial community @ Nasdaq Monday evening. Cormark, who attended along with 3 or 4 other analyst, came out with the following yesterday. I'm happy with Cormark's balanced view and find it a fair analysis. Company still needs to show they can monetize, hence for now the free shares, however as the company reports deals with customers, which I think they will, the $9 could get built in and target could get raised. I still look for opportunities to trade some shares outside my core position:

Cormark report details 9 dollar target https://twitter.com/dougheuringaria/status/610877972401270784

akeaways From Investor Briefing
We attended Sphere 3D investor/analyst briefing yesterday in which the company provided its strategic growth plan to position itself in the hybrid cloud while it showcased its latest virtualization, storage and data management products and solutions. In particular, the session included a keynote from Mr. Larry Orecklin, VP, Chief Evangelist of Microsoft where he emphasized the importance of its partnership with Sphere to its Azure platform. The bottom line, we believe Sphere’s investor briefing which showcased its new solutions reinforced our view on the name where the company is entering a new product cycle that should drive renewed revenue growth but against a rebased and more efficient cost base. This combination should have the company take advantage of leverage and reach an inflection point of improving margins and positive cash flows. We continue to value Sphere 3D using a DCF analysis to capture the growth profile of the combined company beyond the product and sales integration period. Our analysis points to $9.00 target price. We have a Buy (S) recommendation.

attended Sphere 3D investor/analyst briefing yesterday in which the company provided its strategic growth plan to position itself in the hybrid cloud, while it showcased its latest virtualization, storage and data management products and solutions. In particular, the session included a keynote from Mr. Larry Orecklin, VP, Chief Evangelist of Microsoft where he emphasized the importance of its partnership with Sphere to its Azure platform.
Supporting Microsoft In Hybrid Cloud: With Sphere being in a product transition phase, we believe it was insightful to hear firsthand from a member of the Microsoft team (Mr. Larry Orecklin) speaking on the significance of its technology and sales partnership with Sphere. Specifically, Mr. Orecklin highlighted the use of Sphere’s technology in extending the capabilities of the Azure platform that Microsoft otherwise could not do on its own, particularly on enabling the hybrid cloud model, whether it be on-premise, in the cloud, or some combination of both with scalability being one of the key benefits. Recall, Sphere and Microsoft entered into a strategic collaboration earlier this year to enable support of Glassware on Microsoft Azure. The two companies are working together to simplify businesses’ migration of existing Windows-based applications from physical infrastructure to the Azure cloud and while they are targeting various verticals, the education market has been the initial target market. On that note, New Caney ISD, an independent school district in Texas, US, is a customer of Sphere and Microsoft with Mr. Orecklin indicating that the two companies were able to help New Caney transition to the hybrid cloud supporting 10K devices as it was unable to make the shift on its own given the limitation of its infrastructure that was not cost effective and would have made it uneconomical.
Ramping Up New Product Cycle: With the closing of its acquisition of Overland Storage, Sphere has been ramping up new integrated product solutions to target the converged infrastructure market in virtualization, data management and storage. Recall, the two companies had been working together for some time (close to two years) given their previous technology and reseller partnership that has Sphere expecting increased product launches mid this year, and based on the investor event, we believe the company is on track to that plan. Specifically, the company highlighted its Glassware and SnapCLOUD, an enterprise-class virtual storage platform with both already being hybrid cloud (on-premise and in the cloud) enabled and having the ability to support Microsoft’s Azure platform. Sphere has already begun to target a number of market verticals such as healthcare and government in addition to education. In healthcare, the company recently announced a new and its largest supply agreement with Novarad to deliver its Glassware, V3 and storage solutions to 400 healthcare facilities in the US that is expected to begin deployment in Q3/15.
Bottom Line: We believe Sphere’s investor briefing which showcased its new solutions reinforced our view on the name where the company is entering a new product cycle that should drive renewed revenue growth but against a rebased and more efficient cost base. This combination should have the company take advantage of leverage and reach an inflection point of improving margins and positive cash flows. We continue to value Sphere 3D using a DCF analysis to capture the growth profile of the combined company beyond the product and sales integration period. Our analysis points to $9.00 target price. We have a Buy (S) recommendation. While we believe the potential disruptive nature of Sphere’s technology has potential meaningful value (greater than the current value), the limited record of operating execution and Overland’s history of losses despite our view of a positive turn in profitability point to a considerable level of operating risk and as such we would underscore the speculative risk on this name.