macosr Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 Honestly I believe the C4 should open Composer Pro up to techie home owners for a fee to those who wish to do some things on their own but only through a dealer. There are many software developers out there that want to tinker with their own systems and still work with a dealer. Most people like me end up going down the road of DIY but I appreciate the C4 eco-system and good dealer support (I don’t want to deal with everything on my own) and I would never have the time to do a system as large as mine on my own. I would imagine there are quite a few people like me and it would open up C4 more and cause wider adoption. Composer Pro could always be locked down to a specific system but, honestly, even now, there are always people smart enough to get around whatever blocks get put in place to lock things down. But, at the end of the day, as we all know, C4 is only as good as the “local” dealer / installer. DanITman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 6 hours ago, wnpublic said: https://investors.snapone.com/news-releases/news-release-details/snap-one-reports-fiscal-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2021 Well - net loss of $36.5M, up $11M from last year. a near $100M swing in net cash flow (from $64M at end of 2020 to -$30M now), and half the cash on hand from last year. Bunch of non-GAAP numbers to pretty it up of course. Guess I was wrong, everything is great. Looks like both COGS and SG&A are rising faster than sales. The market didn't like it as the stock fell 19% today. They may have to raise prices to get to profitability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew luecke Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 5 hours ago, wnpublic said: https://investors.snapone.com/news-releases/news-release-details/snap-one-reports-fiscal-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2021 Well - net loss of $36.5M, up $11M from last year. a near $100M swing in net cash flow (from $64M at end of 2020 to -$30M now), and half the cash on hand from last year. Bunch of non-GAAP numbers to pretty it up of course. Guess I was wrong, everything is great. I know nothing about reading this stuff. But, they also bought Staub Electronics and Access Networks (Net cash used for investing in 2021 increased by 27,817,000). Not sure if this also affects some of the numbers you're quoting.. But it would definitely impact the on-hand cash they have.. Also, Net sales increased 24% to $1,008.0 million from $814.1 million . So they're definitely selling more. That excludes the impact of sales caused by COVID (many people didn't want installers in their property during covid) And the impact of stock shortages which are a big issue in the electronics industry for most companies. The new releases also seem to complete the last critical features (even new features like multi-display manager greatly expand the market Control4 can sell to). Dunno if you're being sarcastic, but the 24% increase in sales in particular to me suggests that shows that yes, they ARE doing well.. CTMatthew 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wnpublic Posted March 23, 2022 Author Share Posted March 23, 2022 3 minutes ago, zaphod said: Looks like both COGS and SG&A are rising faster than sales. The market didn't like it as the stock fell 19% today. Saw that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 Sales increased by 24%, but COGS increased by 26% and SG&A by 31%. Gross Margin (1-COGS/Revenue) fell slightly from 42% to 40% (These are annual figures comparing 2020 to 2021). Expenses growing faster than revenue is not a good story, especially when you were losing money to begin with. That's why I speculate that they may have to increase prices. Or get rid of overhead by cutting SG&A. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew luecke Posted March 23, 2022 Share Posted March 23, 2022 Just now, zaphod said: Sales increased by 24%, but COGS increased by 26% and SG&A by 31%. Gross Margin (1-COGS/Revenue) fell slightly from 42% to 40% (These are annual figures comparing 2020 to 2021). Expenses growing faster than revenue is not a good story, especially when you were losing money to begin with. That's why I speculate that they may have to increase prices. Or get rid of overhead by cutting SG&A. It's possible. Lots of companies such as SONOS actually increased their prices already (and lots of other prices in various industries have increased already). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LollerAgent Posted March 24, 2022 Share Posted March 24, 2022 1 hour ago, Andrew luecke said: It's possible. Lots of companies such as SONOS actually increased their prices already (and lots of other prices in various industries have increased already). C4 has raised their prices. More than once. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew luecke Posted March 24, 2022 Share Posted March 24, 2022 9 hours ago, LollerAgent said: C4 has raised their prices. More than once. Yeah. And my point is, everyone has. Issues go all the way up the chain and impact overall pricing, and availability. Also, SnapOne sells lots of things, not just Control4.. Expenses have also increased for a lot of companies The stock situation is so bad for some types of electronics that Ford is apparently considering shipping cars which are missing chips, which will be installed as they become available: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975246/ford-ship-sell-incomplete-vehicles-missing-chips Less chips and other factors have pushed up cost too .. Companies like Crestron have just increased prices globally by 10% I was working for an AV distributor during COVID too, and some products like Yamaha Music, we couldn't get stock of at all during that period (and it shows: https://www.statista.com/statistics/612389/operating-income-of-yamaha-corporations-music-instruments-worldwide/ ). Things like this would impact an AV company like SnapOne similarly.. Even speaking to manufacturers, they've all said getting products produced at the moment is harder. The point is, the last 2 years were both affected by COVID and are atypical. The building industry was heavily affected. You can't conclude that Open Source is killing Control4 based on 2 years of financial statements during COVID imho. If you look at: https://www.readyratios.com/sec/reports/CTRL_control4-corp from pre-covid, they were doing well then. And nothing has really changed in the market for the past 3 years in terms of competition imho (homekit and Android home don't really compete with Control4). I'll get called smug (and thats ok), but I strongly suspect in the upcoming year that we'll see the trend improve again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wnpublic Posted March 24, 2022 Author Share Posted March 24, 2022 6 hours ago, Andrew luecke said: I'll get called smug (and thats ok), but I strongly suspect in the upcoming year that we'll see the trend improve again I wouldn't say smug, I would say, optimistic in the face of the evidence.... https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/23/why-snap-one-stock-got-destroyed-today/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew luecke Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 On 3/25/2022 at 2:14 AM, wnpublic said: I wouldn't say smug, I would say, optimistic in the face of the evidence.... https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/23/why-snap-one-stock-got-destroyed-today/ Do you realise SnapOne is actually a result of SnapAV (a large AV Distributor), acquiring Control4? It would be like saying Microsoft Windows is dying because Microsoft stocks drop one year (Microsoft has lots of products). SnapAV distributes plenty of other automation products, and distributes plenty of products used by competing installers... It would be actually really interesting to see their sales breakdown. You need specific metrics which show the performance of Control4 on their overall performance to have any relevance to this discussion. That means you can't simply look at the balance sheet of a large diverse company and try to apply it to a single product without detailed info. It's also fairly clear that the author who wrote the article you attached barely knows what SnapOne does as a company. That's why they haven't analysed why sales have increased, mentioned anything about future products, recently announced products, or how the company could improve. It's literally just a look at this years balance sheet. To have any relevance to this discussion, he'd need to compare performance against other home automation and AV companies, or at the very least, have info on how Control4 specifically performed. No interviewing was done with anyone.. It's clearly a low effort article. Also, don't forget that share price means even less, when you consider Gamestop or useless crypto's like Dogecoin. What matters long term, is the product itself. And the evidence against success of control4 becomes far less convincing when looking at the long term trend in the past few years, instead of only the past year (especially an abnormal year). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amr Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 46 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said: Do you realise SnapOne is actually a result of SnapAV (a large AV Distributor), acquiring Control4? It would be like saying Microsoft Windows is dying because Microsoft stocks drop one year (Microsoft has lots of products). SnapAV distributes plenty of other automation products, and distributes plenty of products used by competing installers... It would be actually really interesting to see their sales breakdown. You need specific metrics which show the performance of Control4 for shares to have any relevance to this discussion. That means you can't simply look at the balance sheet of a diverse company and try to narrow it to a single product without detailed info. It's fairly clear that the author who wrote the article you attached barely knows what SnapOne does as a company. That's why they haven't analysed why sales have increased, mentioned anything about future products, recently announced products, or how the company could improve. It's literally just a look at this years balance sheet. To have any relevance to this discussion, he'd need to compare performance against other home automation and AV companies, or at the very least, have info on how Control4 specifically performed. No interviewing was done with anyone.. It's clearly a low effort, minimal research article. Also, don't forget that share price means even less, when you consider Gamestop or useless crypto's like Dogecoin. What matters long term, is the product itself. And the evidence against success of control4 becomes far less convincing when looking at the trend in the past too, instead of only the past year Yes, C4 discussion is irrelevant, company as a whole is not doing well, like many other vendors, I hope they survive those years 22 will be another tough year, hopefully by 23 they would pickup again and show profitability. Andrew luecke 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
416to305 Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 On 3/18/2022 at 6:27 PM, South Africa C4 user said: I thought long and hard before commenting on this as I know some won’t appreciate what I have to say. Honestly, I love C4 and honestly, this sort of comment from a C4 employee makes me cringe. I have no idea what customer service is like in the states, but if one of my employees made a comment like this on a public forum, I would de-authorise him from making any public comments with regard to my brand. In fact, a comment like this would be a dismissible offence at our company as it would be in breach of our social media policy. Just wanted to say as a business owner I 100% agree with you. If any employee of mine posted that on a public forum they would be immediately terminated (it's even in their contract). To be totally honest, I wish I hadn't seen that post as it quite frankly just turned me off C4 big time. In fact, this has me seriously reconsidering deploying C4 at our second property now and I think I may just pull the trigger on the Savant quote I got. I'm also sending this forum post to the Dealer that quoted me and advising that this right here is the reason we will be going with another solution. This really sucks. Way to go C4 employee. milehighguy and South Africa C4 user 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BXTR Posted March 25, 2022 Share Posted March 25, 2022 7 hours ago, 416to305 said: Just wanted to say as a business owner I 100% agree with you. If any employee of mine posted that on a public forum they would be immediately terminated (it's even in their contract). To be totally honest, I wish I hadn't seen that post as it quite frankly just turned me off C4 big time. In fact, this has me seriously reconsidering deploying C4 at our second property now and I think I may just pull the trigger on the Savant quote I got. I'm also sending this forum post to the Dealer that quoted me and advising that this right here is the reason we will be going with another solution. This really sucks. Way to go C4 employee. Do we know for a fact that he is a C4 employee? The arrogance of his comment was unbelievably high which leads me to believe that he’s unbelievable on top of being a supreme douche Further to that, the likelihood that he has the ability to pull the pin on a dealer or user is absolutely zero. I haven’t heard something that ridiculous for some time… talk about puffing out one’s chest. Control4Savant and South Africa C4 user 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted March 26, 2022 Share Posted March 26, 2022 20 hours ago, 416to305 said: Just wanted to say as a business owner I 100% agree with you. If any employee of mine posted that on a public forum they would be immediately terminated (it's even in their contract). To be totally honest, I wish I hadn't seen that post as it quite frankly just turned me off C4 big time. In fact, this has me seriously reconsidering deploying C4 at our second property now and I think I may just pull the trigger on the Savant quote I got. I'm also sending this forum post to the Dealer that quoted me and advising that this right here is the reason we will be going with another solution. This really sucks. Way to go C4 employee. Glad to hear I am not daft . Equally, I wouldn’t let one (inappropriate) comment from a C4 employee put you off the system itself. It is a truly great system and I cannot (do not) believe that the views posted here are representative of the C4 culture. I have interacted with numerous other C4 employees and have always been impressed! C4 remains the best automation system available in my opinion. cdcllc, BXTR and OceanDad 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wnpublic Posted March 26, 2022 Author Share Posted March 26, 2022 1 hour ago, South Africa C4 user said: Glad to hear I am not daft . Equally, I wouldn’t let one (inappropriate) comment from a C4 employee put you off the system itself. It is a truly great system and I cannot (do not) believe that the views posted here are representative of the C4 culture. I have interacted with numerous other C4 employees and have always been impressed! C4 remains the best automation system available in my opinion. Well he has renamed himself “defunct”, so probably figured out he made a misstep. LollerAgent, Control4Savant and South Africa C4 user 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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