I have been thinking about your question and it seems obvious on the surface that the AWWA acceptance would open up large new markets for UGSI products. However, the comment in Andy's letter didn't seem to do much to the stock. I worked in the water utility business for over 30 years and even saw a UGSI representative give a presentation to our engineering staff (probably 5 or 6 years ago-maybe longer). The presentation was very good and it motivated me to buy the stock for many reasons. The presenter was great and he made me feel like the company was working very hard to promote it's products and build a future. The engineers, while seemingly impressed, acted like engineers. They are a bunch reluctant to change, especially if a new product they chose fails and it becomes a liability issue. The engineers didn't seem to be willing to diverge from standard products even if the UGSI product seemed a good one. I think it was shortly after the presentation that there were coordinated attacks against the UGSI product from competing products that forced UGSI to spend more time defending itself. I felt that UGSI was still headed up because each year Andy's letter indicated new customers and growth, hoping they would slowly eat into the reluctant market and gain acceptance. Many years later and many positive letters from Andy and we are still at the same place or lower. Now to answer your question (my opinion only), I think the AWWA acceptance will boost UGSI because it takes some of the liability directly off the engineer. They can always fall back on the AWWA acceptance as a defense, something they did not have before. So, I guess we will see when the AWWA acceptance actually happens.
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