I thought, initially, that this company had market-leader potential in the area of distance learning, especially right now with the ongoing scamdemic. Unfortunately, however, after looking closer into their product offering I'm not seeing anything particularly innovative or distinctive. Their revenue did increase in 2020 over 2019. So, perhaps they can keep that going a few more years and then get bought out by a bigger competitor.
Boxlight- BOXL $2.58, 1 Apr 21
Outstanding Shares: 56.7m (2020 annual report)
Employees: 189
Market cap: 131.46m
Cash on hand: 13.46m (cash and equivalents)
Products:
Interactive LED flat panels, projectors, whiteboards, and peripherals, plus conferencing, classroom, science education, and professional development software and content. The company provides installation, training, consulting, and maintenance for its products. About 75% of the company’s customers are educational institutions, and 40% of its sales are in the US. The company sells its products through “resellers” rather than direct. Its suite of educational products is trademarked as “Connected Classroom.” Its front-of-class displays are branded as “Mimio” and “Clevertouch.” Its backend software and systems are cloud-based.
The company has aggressively acquired other companies and their product patents in order to more quickly expand its product line. These companies include EOS in 2018, Modern Robotics in 2019, and MyStemKits and Sahara Presentation Systems in 2020. The company uses Samsung for its flat panels and projectors.
They have scored sales with some fairly large customers, including school districts in San Diego, Dallas, New York City, Baltimore, and Atlanta.
Notes:
The company has 26m in debt to third parties.
I’m not sure that Boxlight would qualify as a “market leader” because the interactive education industry is highly competitive, with similar products and services also marketed by Smart Technologies, Promethean, ViewSonic, Dell, Samsung, Panasonic, and ClearTouch. Boxlight’s marketing strategy appears to be to keep their costs low so that they can offer a competitively-priced, yet high quality product. But, what company isn’t trying to do this? I don’t see anything in their product suite that isn’t something you could buy somewhere or from someone else. They don’t mention in their literature any new technological innovation that they have in development. I searched around, but couldn’t find any independent reviews of their products.
It seems that their best bet is to do well-enough to become a target of acquisition by a larger competitor. Nevertheless, since they don’t appear to have a significant competitive advantage, I’m not sure how their stock price can move much above the $5-8 range based on their current potential. The stock is currently priced fairly cheaply, however, so it may be worth buying a few shares and waiting for next year’s annual report to see how they did with their 2021 sales.