ERD seems to have some promising prospects and I have been contemplating getting in before the recent announcement regarding the California Road Charge Pilot with Caltrans.
In response to benjitara, as many people have mentioned the share price includes a large premium for the potential ERD provides and their current foothold in their respective market, that being said there are a few things you all might find interesting, I know I did.
What I found interesting is that ERD has a few competitors in the US, and would like to discuss a few statements made by ERD, firstly, "Caltrans selects EROAD as technology provider to California Road Charge Pilot". What they failed to mention is that there are three other firms that were selected for the California Road Charge Pilot, including Azuga, Intelligent Mechatronic Systems Inc. and a state-run service supported by Arvato Mobility Solutions. Although EROAD was selected to service heavy vehicles in the pilot - which is ultimately their forte. That being said, it does not in anyway discredit from EROADs achievement and success in tapping into the North American market especially with regards to getting a strong foothold before the US fed. mandate takes full effect - and it still currently it appears that they are one of a few ELD/WMT providers for heavy vehicles, just a word of caution regarding the level of optimism seen here derived from the announcements.
Another statement which captured my attention was a statement made around the time of the November announcement regarding the US Federal Mandate, "We currently expect EROAD to be the only ELD provider able to offer customers both ELD services and Oregon WMT services." They may be the only ELD provider to provide ELD services AND Oregon WMT services, however they are NOT the only company to provide ELD services OR WMT services. Personally, I found that the statement had no reason to be there other than to imply that they are the 'only' provider for these services which isn't the case - they are the only provider for BOTH services. A little bit of semantics here but I thought I'd mention it.
Regarding IMS, they have also been awarded a Road User Charge contract from Oregon state mid March last year limited to light duty vehicles (cars and trucks), and I don't think there's anything stopping them from tending to heavy duty vehicles as IMS also offers fleet management, RUC and a whole range of other services. They are even tapping into US insurance companies to provide them with data and information about drivers which can then be used to calculate premiums however there appears to be a clout of negative press regarding the use of IMS's DriveSync and light duty vehicles.
With all that being said I still believe EROAD has amazing potential for growth and expansion especially into the North American market and their niche for heavy vehicles.
Theres a whole lot of other things I'd like to post but I won't bore you all to death and I'm getting tired haha. I have attached some of the articles for reference below and hope you might find them useful.
Interested to hear your opinions,
Ace.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/ne...16/16pr019.htm
http://www.itsinternational.com/cate...tion-projects/
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks