unusualstocks

A recent business win announced by Ackroo. By my estimations this adds about $100k in annual recurring revenues. They now work with roughly 10% of the Canadian auto dealer market. http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/ackroo-adds-300th-automotive-dealership---ackroo-further-expands-its-client-portfolio-with-additional-20-location-dealer-group-605610516.html

Interesting response, Nate. The company just completed this raise and gets $1M cash on the balance sheet to deploy. This is the 3rd raise in 2 years, and the last one before breakeven occurs later in Q4 or Q1. The company has less than 30M fully diluted shares. My personal opinion is there will be no more dilution-- future growth capital will be achieved via debt I would hope. I am not sure I understand what you mean by "what's the business plan here?" It has been well documented and discussed many places. My previous post with the article by AlphaTree Group is a good one.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ackroo-closes-private-placement-ackroo-130000940.html Ackroo Closes Private Placement - Ackroo subscribes the full offering, adding $1,000,000 to fuel the next phases of growth PR Newswire PR NewswireNovember 18, 2016Comment OTTAWA, Nov. 18, 2016 /CNW/ - Ackroo Inc. (TSX-V: AKR; OTC: AKRFF) ("Ackroo" or the "Company"), a gift card, loyalty and rewards technology and services provider, today announced it has closed a private placement for gross proceeds of $1,000,000. In connection with closing, the Company issued 5,000,000 common shares to subscribers at a price of $0.20 per share and 2,500,000 common share purchase warrants. Each common share purchase warrant entitles subscribers to purchase one additional common share of the Company at a price of $0.30 per share for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. The warrants are subject to accelerated expiry in the event the Company's shares close at $0.40 or more for 10 consecutive trading days. In conjunction with the placement the Company has paid $14,940 and issued 67,200 common share purchase warrants as a commission to finder's who have introduced qualified investors to the Company. The finders' warrants are exercisable on the same terms as the private placement warrants. All securities issued on closing of the private placement are subject to a four month and a day hold period. "This financing was key to our next phases of growth" said Steve Levely, chief executive officer at Ackroo. "The funds allow us to support our working capital requirements while also providing us with additional funds to hire more staff back into the Company to position us for scale. Our hiring plan has us adding staff into sales, marketing and product development which will allow the Company to better support our general operations, our channel partners and our current and prospective acquisitions. As we begin to create more departmental focus and improve on our ability to execute, these additional hires play a key role in our success. We believe not only will the additional staff assist us with closing the final gap of our operating losses, these individuals will help solidify our employee baseline so that we can continue to execute on our organic and inorganic growth plans and begin scaling the business further. An exciting win for the Company, our customers and for our shareholders." In addition, Ackroo has granted options to purchase 235,000 common shares to officers, employees and consultants of the Company at a price of $0.20, for a period of 3 years. The grant is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Great article just published written by Todd at AlphaTree Group: http://alphatreegroup.com/blog-post/ackroo-busted-unicorn-verge-multi-bagger-status/

Ackroo is a tiny microcap company. That cannot be lost in the conversation. If everything were rosy it would be trading at 10x revenues, you are right. It takes vision to see a potential runway for the company. I see it, it is ok if you or others don't. That is what makes investing...investing. A huge mistake the CEO has made, in my opinion, has been in providing guidance. It is stupid to do so as such a small company (and perhaps as any size company). It has crashed and burned him, and rightfully so investors like @parasd have seemingly lost trust in him because of his inability to hit some of his previous guidance forecasts. Last year's revenues didn't hit $2M as he hoped, and it looks like profitability and positive cash flow may come in Q4, over a year later from his initial guidance on this front. Ouch! Perhaps the biggest mistake Steve made was buying a company before having the cash to do so. This literally could have brought Ackroo down. Based on a good relationship between Steve and the DRC owner, the re-negotiation of the terms has been fairly simple for Ackroo to do. Plus, without Ackroo around DRC would get nothing as they are not a secured creditor to the company. But, this absolutely could have been a nail in the coffin for Ackroo. It felt good to see Ackroo be able to make a $350k payment to DRC in June, with the next payment not due again until January 2017. Personally, I like a CEO who is nimble and flexible and can accept defeat when it happens in terms of a particular business strategy. When Steve tried to implement a reseller model he bailed on it a short 6 months or so later as it was more challenging than he thought. I would rather that happen instead of seeing him still using resources and money to try figure it out. Of course, the biggest challenge for the company has been a lack of cash. Many investors will say "ya, what an excuse"...but it is a fact. Cash can accelerate any business if allocated correctly, and I hope that the company gets to a position via free cash flows that we get to see how successful Steve can be at reinvesting cash into the business. One thing is for certain, despite the cash limitations Steve has been able to do a lot of good. This number is a very rough guess on my end but over the past 12 months Steve has been able to make just $300-400k in available cash (cash not allocated to debt payments, DRC licesning fees, etc) go a long way, with 30% organic growth in Q2 2016 over Q2 2015. But for anyone suggest that the business model for Ackroo is not working would be making a factually incorrect statement. Gross margins of 65% have been steady, expenses and operating costs continue to decrease, client retention is still very high, and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) per location has still been hovering near $100/month. No signs of any real wekness in the business to speak of, except the continued lack of cash. FY 2016, after 2 quarters, is showing revenues of over $1.1M. If the effects of the First Data Canada deal, as well as the addition of Quickservice as a partner, start to surface in Q3 and Q4 like I hope they will, I think $2.5M or higher is not out of reach for full year 2016. At such number, I feel pretty confident the company would be generating free cash flows and would be profitable. See attached for a nice snapshot of the company's progress over the past few years.

Tough crowd :-X

Q2 2016 Results were fantastic. 77% YoY growth, with roughly 30% of that growth being organic. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ackroo-announces-q2-2016-financial-120000830.html

http://www.unusualstocks.net/members-only/2016/6/10/qa-regarding-the-ackroo-and-first-data-partnership Earlier this week Ackroo announced a highly strategic partnership with First Data Canada, a subsidiary of First Data Corporation, the largest payment provider in the world in terms of merchant locations (6M+ locations), having the biggest market share in the USA at around 55% of all merchant locations. This is a significant milestone for the company, and a very unique one, as it is not everyday you hear about a $12B+ market cap company selecting to partner with a $3M market cap company. I have received some very good questions from investors regarding the partnership and I thought I would address them here for all to see. These answers are based on some high level discussions with Steve Levely (CEO) as well as some independent research and discussions with some people that are very familiar with First Data and this industry in general. Question: First Data has all kinds of solutions for small businesses with loyalty programs/management and gift cards being only one of their offerings. What kind of incentives are there for First Data Canada in ''pushing'' AKR's solution vs the dozen or so solutions First Data is currently offering? Answer: There are a few answers to this question that I believe are important to understand: 1) If this relationship works like similar ones, the First Data sales reps are paid a one-time commission for the referral and First Data makes a commission on Ackroo's processing fees. So there is a financial gain to First Data. 2) It is my understanding that First Data is losing merchant accounts in Canada. As a result they are very likely looking (just an assumption of mine as I would be looking too) to move their core customers to Ackroo in an effort to keep those customers in their merchant network. 3) When payment processors sell gift card and loyalty products, statistics show merchants stay 2 years longer with the processor. Given this, it becomes very important for a company like First Data to partner with a company such as Ackroo who has a very high customer retention rate (90%+). 4) In order for First Data to win many new merchant accounts they are looking to differentiate and aligning with a robust and affordable gift card and loyalty provider like Ackroo makes it easier for them to close the deals. 5) To win business from the competition (like Moneris and others) who have their own gift card and loyalty platform First Data needs a 3rd party provider like Ackroo to import the competitive card #’s and balances into Ackroo's platform so that the consumers are not affected and they can continue to use the current cards. Question: Why should we expect Ackroo to have success penetrating First Data's Canadian merchant locations when they have such small current penetration in their existing payment processors (Global and Chase) current network? (FYI...as a reference point Ackroo has about 250,000 merchant locations available to them within the networks of current partners Chase and Global Payments, of which they are in 1,200 or so at this time-- approx. 400 of those 1,200 locations are with various other processors using Ackroo's system through direct integration to their POS software or AKR virtual terminals). Answer: Currently First Data has only two partners in Canada, now Ackroo being one of them. Based on some conversations I have had with some people close to First Data, they are having some issues with their current partner so it is possible that eventually First Data will only work with Ackroo (again, a BIG assumption on my part). Another reason why it's very important for Ackroo to deliver in the early innings of this relationship. To put this in perspective, Chase has 3 partners and Global has 5 partners in the space (making the penetration into Ackroo's potential merchant locations a bit more challenging) so effectively Ackroo will be only one of two current Canadian partners for First Data...and hopefully eventually the only one. Question: What does this initial partnership with First Data Canada mean in terms of the future potential for the partnership to expand into First Data's USA's 4M potential merchant locations? How quickly could this potentially happen? Answer: A very conservative response to this question would be that a transition into the USA with First Data would be a mid-2017 event. However, I suspect the first 3-4 months of the partnership will dictate what this potential US expansion timeline may look like. I would anticipate that Ackroo, outside of its First Data relationship, would begin entering the US market aggressively in late 2016, leveraging the relationships it is currently building with some of it's Canadian customers with US operations (i.e. Perkins test in Canada...could it roll out in the USA to all locations?)

http://www.unusualstocks.net/members-only/2016/6/4/an-update-on-ackroo-the-closing-of-the-private-placement-and-the-new-partnership-with-first-data-set-the-stage-for-significant-organic-growth An Update on Ackroo: The Closing of the Private Placement and the New Partnership with First Data Set the Stage for Significant Organic Growth There have been several pieces of significant news this week from Ackroo (AKR.V), one of which, in my opinion, is game-changing and elevates Ackroo to a whole new level within the loyalty and gift card market. The closure of the private placement and the announcement of Ackroo's partnership with First Data, the largest POS provider in the USA and one of the largest in the world, sets the stage for significant organic growth ahead that will fuel the company quickly to profitability and positive cash flow, thus allowing for acquisition opportunities to be acted upon later in 2016. Let's examine each of these developments and their potential impacts to Ackroo: 1. Closure of the Private Placement On March 17, 2016, Ackroo announced a private placement seeking to raise up to $2M. On May 10, 2016, Ackroo announced that it had re-negotiated its terms with Dealer Rewards Canada ("DRC"). Under the former terms of the acquisition Ackroo was required to complete payments totaling $1,130,000 prior to January 2017. The re-negotiated terms extended those terms to January 2019 with Ackroo agreeing to pay DRC $330,000 on or before July 1st, 2016, in addition to twenty-four monthly payments of $36,916 commencing in January 2017. In effect, this significantly reduced the capital requirements of the company (remember, Ackroo was paying over $100k+ per month to DRC for this unsecured payout which was eating up cash flow) and thus Ackroo announced it was not seeking to raise the full $2M from the private placement announced in March. On June 9th 2016 , Ackroo announced it closed the private placement with $587,316 of new capital. This capital will be sufficient to fund the company's near-term organic growth opportunities and the upcoming July payment to DRC. There will likely need to be another private placement in a few months to provide the ammunition for greater organic scale and an accretive acquisition or two. Ackroo was able to raise nearly $600k with the market price mostly below the PP price of .20/share since the announcement of the equity raise, and without any warrants attached to the deal. Very positive! Ackroo is now re-capitalized and closer than ever to profitability and positive cash flow! 2. Partnership with First Data On June 8, 2016, Ackroo announced a new partnership with First Data. This is a HUGE WIN, and a very strategic move for Ackroo for many reasons as First Data owns about 55% of the US payment processing market, and has more merchant locations in the world than any other payment processor! Here are the reasons that I believe this deal is extremely lucrative and validating for Ackroo: -Opens up 6M merchant locations to Ackroo globally (initially 30k in Canada and quickly growing, 4M in USA). This is compared to the 250k potential merchant locations that Ackroo has now through its current Canadian POS partners like Chase Paymentech and Global Payments. Wow! -Validates Ackroo’s technology and scalability as First Data did many months of due diligence before selecting Ackroo as its partner in this area. -There will be 100+ Sales Reps of First Data that will now “work” with Ackroo, selling it’s products into First Data’s current and prospective merchant locations. All of this without Ackroo’s expenses/overhead increasing a penny. -As a result of this partnership, adding a 3rd major partner could potentially increase organic growth by more than 33% if not higher. This is just an assumption on my end as I have no way of validating this yet however I wouldn’t be surprised if we see nice additional organic lift start to happen as early as Q3 2016. It is quite unheard of for a company with a $12B market cap to select a partner like Ackroo with a mere $3M market cap. This speaks volume about Ackroo as a company, their technology and scalability, and First Data's belief and confidence in Steve Levely, Ackroo CEO. The above two events indicate a significant inflection point for Ackroo that should allow the company's growth to begin accelerating, thus allowing for the potential of significant shareholder returns.

Based on my discussions with other investors that have participated directly in the PP and that know others that are participating in the PP, my estimates are that the company has around $200k-$250k committed at this time. I also know that there are several large investors in discussion with the company for this round. So, I suspect the private placement will either end up with $350k-$450k range in new commitments or $850k-$1M in commitments depending upon what transpires in the week ahead.

I wrote the below in late December, 2015. Since that time the company has announced it has launched its Nextext product in the North American market and began earning revenues in April 2016 as a result of this launch. Link to original article: http://www.unusualstocks.net/members-only/2015/12/26/new-position-ivrnet-iviv Introduction One thing that I have learned when investing in tiny, nano-cap companies is just how important investing in a company with a ‘margin of safety’ is. However, it isn’t always possible to purchase companies with a large ‘margin of safety’ because there are very few tiny companies that actually have one and the ones that do have a solid ‘margin of safety’ generally are priced at a bit of premium for that reason alone. 'Margin of safety’, to me, can mean several things. In the world of nano and micro-caps, recurring revenues amongst a fairly diversified customer base can provide that ‘margin of safety’, just as management showing a commitment by participating significantly in a private placement or by purchasing shares on the open market can provide a ‘margin of safety’. When I began doing research on Ivrnet (IVI.V) several months ago I was immediately attracted to the current “margin of safety” in the company. Once understanding the potential for the business, coupled with the downside protection because of the current business, I took a sizable position. The company has moved into an aggressive sales phase after transitioning from a R&D phase for new and updated product offerings, and I think we are at a very exciting point in time in the company's lifecycle. I am happy to share with you details about the company and why I feel it can provide significant upside from current levels. Company Overview Note: Throughout this article I will reference the “legacy” products of the company. This simply refers to the products as they exist/are before any of the revisions and improvements are transitioned and sold into the marketplace. Ivrnet is a communications company that develops and operates intelligent software applications that facilitate automated transactions that include personalized communication between people; mass communication for disseminating to thousands of people at the same time; and personalized communications between people and automated systems. Ivrnet makes these applications accessible via voice, text, phone, email, fax, and the internet. The Network Services division of the company consist of the basic texting services, audio conferencing, call management systems. Nothing too exciting here, except that the recurring revenue stream from this business unit is very attractive, providing a stable base for the business while the company focuses on the rollout of its Hosted Services and Hosted Applications division. AdCentral is the next phase for the company’s text services. More on this later. The Hosted Services segment of the business is one of the segments that presents real opportunity for future growth. The division consists of a newly developed and soon to be released IvrnetCentral (“ICentral”), and hosted within this platform will be the current ITSportsNet (“ITSN”) and Ivrnet for Communities (“Communities Central”) services. Currently, ITSN and Community Central service over 1.2 million users and 1300 organizations across North America. When these services are hosted within the new ICentral, clients and users will experience a more user-friendly process and increased efficiencies. More on the potential of ICentral later. The Hosted Applications segment of the business also presents significant opportunity for future growth. This segment consists of Safepay/Telepay (“Telepay”), which is a credit card processing system that allows governmental entities, corporate, and retail clients to process credit card payments over the phone in a compliant manner. These services meet the Payment Card Industry Standard (“PCI”) for automatically processing payments over the phone. The nice thing about Teleplay is that it allows the card holder to pay over the phone without ever exposing his/her card number to a live agent, thereby reducing any significant risk of fraud. The Telephony Applications segment of the business consist primarily of CallTrak, Call Monitoring services, and Automated Reporting services. CallTrak is utilized solely by the auto dealer industry, and is sold exclusively by a reseller. Management Overview The company is led by David Snell (CEO) and Chris Topolniski (COO). David joined the company in 2003 and Chris joined in 2012. When Chris joined, he and David began the process of redeveloping the company, building a platform that would allow the company to transition its legacy products into new and improved product offerings. The company has made a lot of progress in doing this and 2016 will be the year that many of these could pay dividends as the company is now embarking on a very focused sales effort. Share Structure I am pretty comfortable with the share structure.There are roughly 70 million outstanding shares with 93 million fully diluted shares. Insider ownership is roughly 35% with management participating significantly in the last private placement in June, 2015. The issued warrants are exercisable at $.07, $.09, and $.12. Brief Financial Overview Ivrnet has essentially operated at breakeven over the past few years. The financials show a company with rather consistent revenues each quarter over the past few years. It’s pretty consistent because roughly 85-90% of the companies revenues are recurring with around 75% gross margins. Without any real growth, the company has just done its thing quarter over quarter, basically operating the company at breakeven from year to year. This explains the relatively small range of stock price movement over the past few years. However, with the strong recurring revenue base for its legacy products, and with significant new products ready to launch, the company is nearing what could be a real inflection point (see my past article on “Inflection Points” by clicking here). Cash is definitely low, only $70k on the balance sheet. While this is concerning, it may not be an issue since the company is operating at breakeven with cash flow and profit being generated. But, if traction for it’s new products doesn’t occur quickly, I suspect we could see the company enter into a non-dilutive transaction for additional working capital. Investment Thesis My investment thesis for Irvnet is centered around three main areas: 1. Margin of Safety with legacy products provides very limited downside risk As noted above, over the past few years the company has operated around breakeven simply by continuing to service customers with their legacy products while building out its new ICentral offering and other improvements to existing products. Funds for the companies R&D for the new platform and products were raised from several private placements, as well as with profit and cash flow generated from operations. So, while the company moves it’s focus to selling ICentral and its other products, the business will continue to plug away with its existing legacy products. It’s a nice backdrop for the company to operate against as it scales ICentral and its new products to existing and new customers. 2. Potential for ICentral, Teleplay, and AdCentral The potential for all three products is quite significant. The company has spent extensive capital and resources in the development of ICentral, which is going to provide a completely new, innovative, and self-sufficient way of managing the ISTN and Community Central products. It has significant scalability that would allow the company to sell the product to very large customers without having to spend resources like they have had to to on the legacy ITSN and Community Central products. And with ICentral, the company will be able to target new potential markets that the legacy products couldn’t effectively manage, such as property management companies. With significant gross margins and recurring revenues for ICentral, any growth (which we can be fairly confident there will be) should provide very positive monetary results for the company. I am most excited about the potential for Telepay. The company has some smaller clients utilizing the product (including the Government of Alberta), but the real catalyst here would be landing a deal that I know the company has been going after with the British Colombia government as look to become PCI compliant with their payment systems. The company has additional business opportunities in the pipeline for Telepay as well. The last product worth noting is AdCentral, which is essentially replacing the company’s legacy bulk text messaging services. December 2015 is when the company is launching the AdCentral product and it anticipates its first customers being various transit authorities and/or private companies hired by the transit authorities to run their technological infrastructure back-end and/or their sales/marketing departments. The company expects immediate incremental revenues with the launch of AdCentral. 3. Significant Reduction in expenses as the company moves from R&D to Sales The development of ICentral cost the company close to $2 million in total. The reason for the significant costs were because the company needed to re-code ITSN platforms, thus the company had to commit significant resources to the ICentral development to allow ITSN and Ivrnet for Communities to co-exist under one program. In addition, many resources were spent ensuring that ICentral is incredibly user-friendly, thus eliminating many of the current support costs required by the company in supporting its current user base. The new ICentral further will allow the company to increase its capacity significantly without having to hire additional staffing to support the application. Based on the above explanation, Ivrnet’s Operating Leverage could drive significant net income to the company via increased gross margins by increasing sales while overhead and fixed costs remain relatively constant. Conclusion An investment in Ivrnet allows one to invest in a company with significant downside protection with the companie’s consistent revenues and legacy products. Coupled with the downside protection is a significant opportunity for returns should the company get traction with any of the new product offerings (iCentral, Telepay, AdCentral). There are competitors in the space, but very few, if any, with the competitive advantages that Ivrnet has, especially now with the new ICentral product that is incredibly scalable and priced very competitively given the company’s low overhead structure. There is also a risk that the company doesn’t gain traction with their new products, and if this is the case there is downside protection that exists. However, after speaking with Chris (the COO) and others I feel pretty confident that 2016 could be a milestone year for Ivrnet, and one that can provide investors with tremendous returns from current levels. Disclosure: Long IVI.V with a cost basis of $.045

Gary, not sure. Maybe you missed the previous amendment to the DRC terms? Feel free to reach out to the company if you want to, but I am just happy that this new amendment was completed. Lots of breathing room for the company now and should provide nice momentum to get some cash raised for the current open PP. Then Steve can stop worrying about cash and can focus solely on execution.

Very favorable developments for Ackroo: http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/ackroo-makes-final-amendment-of-payment-terms-for-dealer-rewards-canada-acquisition-578796861.html

An excerpt from the article I just posted on my site regarding Ackroo's Q1 2016 results:http://www.unusualstocks.net/members-only/2016/5/7/a-quick-glance-at-ackroos-q1-2016-results My quick take on Ackroo's Q1 earnings are below, with the understanding that until the company gets capitalized the progress won't mean that much to the market. -42% Revenue growth from same period in 2015 with continued significant reduction in expenses/operating costs. -Subscription growth (i.e. the recurring revenue base) increased over 140% since same period in 2015. -The operating loss from operations for the three months ended March 31, 2016 was $88,122 ($62,442 + $25,680 for non-recurring/non-operating investment services). To show just how close I think the company is to profitability and positive cash flow, if you back out the following three things the company reaches both of these milestones. - $25k for 3 months worth of Investor Relations activities (Ackroo did not renew the contract). - $24k/month ($72k/quarter) in DRC licensing fees. - Transaction, year-end legal fees, and acquisition-related fees. Regarding the DRC licensing fee, it doesn't technically "go away" until all the DRC customers migrate over to Ackroo's platform, but the company can overcome this cost with some more organic growth so that once the DRC fee is gone it won't "get them to profitability" but rather it would "add to profitability".

@Schwab711...with all due respect I honestly have no clue what you are talking about. The company isn't paying anything for "stock promotion". They have never paid for any kind of "stock promotion" since Steve Levely became the CEO is 2014. All they have paid for is the services of an Investor Relations firm for the past 3 months, and I don't think they are even renewing that contract. This is what makes Ackroo so compelling: - 38.5% CAGR from 2012 to 2015 - Recurring revenue in excess of 60% - Customer retention rate in excess of 90% - Gross margin in excess of 70% The last few quarters have shown 60%+ growth. Organic growth should be up 20% for the full year 2016.