Although I am new to the whole world of “Investorshub,” I am not new to the world of corporate strategy and investing. As such, I thought I might get in on some of this action and provide my own two cents on why IMTL is undervalued. I have a busy day job as an M&A and securities attorney so I won’t be posting extremely frequently, but I hope to make some additional follow up posts when I get the time.
First and foremost, IMTL has revenue. Without getting too far into the weeds, both Gettys Images and ShutterStock’s equity is valued at 3x revenue or more (this can be verified as Shutterstock is a public company and Gettys revenue numbers are floating around on the internet). On that basis alone, assuming IMTL’s 2018 revenue will be at least equal to 2017’s, it would be worth a minimum of $2.1mm. I for one believe that IMTL will see some revenue growth this year and therefore, its equity value should increase substantially.
Second, and building off of the name Gettys Images, let’s take a look at Matt Goldman’s past work experience. His time at JupiterMedia ended with a sale of the company to Gettys. Although the full value of the transaction was not realized due to the 2008 recession (originally Gettys offered JupiterMedia $350mm), the transaction was still for ~$100mm. From there, Goldman went to Corbis (a privately owned company founded by none other than Bill Gates), where he again worked until the company partnered with and sold out to Gettys Images. Although he did not start either of these companies, he held large enough roles that if nothing else happened with the company, I am positive that Goldman would find some way to salvage SH value by a sale to Gettys or some other major player. IMTL has the tech and the assets to do it this very moment if that was their end goal.
Third, let’s look at some other companies that have recently taken off:
- SHMP had a recent run to ~$1. Although the tech was patent protected, the company’s management has less youth, experience, and track record IMO. Furthermore, their share structure (~293mm) is approximately 50mm more than what IMTL last listed (~253mm). Most importantly, SHMP has no revenue and a growth plan that requires substantial CAPEX and time to scale. IMTLs model grows exponentially with little CAPEX as it’s all about getting members and shares. On that basis alone, IMTL should be worth about what SHMP is.
- SSFT also recently experienced a nice spike. SSFT is much more applicable here as the two are both AI/tech companies. Both SSFT and IMTL are in up and coming industries that undercut the legal market. As a lawyer, I see the risk that these companies pose more than anybody, yet I am still backing them because they make jobs easier and create new forms of revenue in simple ways. Based on my research, SSFT has less revenue (per marketwatch), is more dependent on project-related revenue (which is riskier than IMTL’s subscription and per share revenue models), and has twice the debt (the level is more like 3x when considering a lot of IMTLs debt is with related parties). Yet somehow, SSFTs share price is almost 40x times greater. Again, on this basis either we should be shorting the hell out of these other companies and/or should see a significant rise in IMTL value.
The last item I will leave with is based on execution. I don’t disagree that IMTL has dropped the ball on certain occasions with releasing financials on-time and releasing its blockchain coin on time (personally, I’m happy there’s no IMAGE coin as I’d rather see a partnership with Kodak since the two offer something that the other would benefit from). However, what I will point out is that IMTL does have 175,000+ members confirmed (I know this as I created two profiles back to back and am member #175,314 and #175,317). They have individuals such as Mia Khalifa and Idris Erba, whose entire livelihood depends on protecting their image and video assets, who have endorsed this system and use it. Clearly IMTL is doing something right. Now that they have announced Fotofy I believe that their model will become viable quick. Along with a few strategic additions that I will try to explain in a future post, this company could see $20mm in revenue with little to no real effort. On that basis alone (assuming a 3x revenue multiple) the share price would be about $0.24.
As such, I think it is clear that the market is valuing this as a copyright recovery company instead of a revolutionary tech company. The growth and scalability of the model is truly unparalleled at this time. I invite you to critique my analysis but please do so and bring real sources to back it. For anybody interested, feel free to message me and I will provide greater detail with sources, thoughts, etc. Happy to be along for this ride for those of you who are long with me! For those of you short, would love to understand your reasoning as you clearly see something I don’t.
