So, this is where Hubwoo is ending 2006 : 4,6% growth, 32M€ revenue and… a 500K€ first-time positive EBITDA for the whole year! Moreover is Alain Andréoli, CEO of Hubwoo, announcing a black EBIT for 2007 and looking at what Alain said and did (35M€ massive impairment, cleaning-up all financial negative weight) so far , I am inclined to believe HUBWOO is in good shape to make it even if, in this type of short press release, the devil lies in the details. Nevertheless, this is just a great job and the whole team awards big congrats! … I know some, on the other side of the Atlantic, that might be… kind-of-jealous…
Now, a couple of open questions:
- Although an annual positive EBITDA means something, Hubwoo growth is much lower than Quadrem’s 18% (read press-release),
- I am surprised and positively impressed that Hubwoo won the so-called global-deal with Honeywell; I thought that Quadrem, although looking mining-field specialised still, has a better global presence and a much more impressive supplier network (47000 compared to 15000 for Hubwoo). This is nevertheless an sound demonstration of Hubwoo commercial and persuasiveness capabilities,
- I’m wondering how ‘bad’ will be competition next year between Hubwoo, IBX, Quadrem and Perfect mainly: will Hubwoo manage to retain its current customers and protect its pricing levels and schema? True, Hubwoo cut down running costs dramatically (50%), but will this be enough as competition was used to propose prices 5 times lower?
- I’m not feeling the expansion of services of Hubwoo – with Procuri primarily and its major development-investment for the enablement of a lucrative supplier network – as positive as it sounds. Although I am a strong believer of the value of a shared supplier-network database for prequal purposes, it is a totally different ball game compared toeProcurement: Hubwoo might loose its focus and competitive advantage of being a eProcurement specialist. On the other hand, anyone can understand it is a way to mitigate my remark #2 (price and client erosion), trying to grab the low-hanging-fruits of a complementary-offering partnership. Actually, have you heard of any cross-sale between Procuri and Hubwoo? would be good to know…