Emblazes interim management statement leaves questions unanswered

Just days after taking a stake in Emblaze the company today came out with an interim management statement. It broadly stated that the group is performing to management expectations. They mentioned that the growth arm of the company has seen improving profits even in the current market conditions. I won’t provide detailed information of the growth arm business as this is as I mentioned in my post of a few days ago (http://sibovalue.blogspot.com/2009/11/emblaze-value-play-with-smartphone.html) the backbone of the company and on which it can lay a steady foundation.


The innovation arm is where the potential upside resides and in particular in Emblaze Mobile. The company confirmed that the official launch of the first phone using the companies Else intuition mobile platform will be on the 24th of November. However it did not go into detail on any contracts with operators or manufacturers. All they said was that “Management believes that the Group's mobile activity will make a contribution to revenues and profits for the Group in 2010 and beyond”. I would have hoped for a stronger endorsement than that. The word “significant” added to that sentence would have been nice to see as this is I am hoping for a significant contribution from Emblaze Mobile in the future.

I managed to find a link to the launch website of the first ELSE phone http://www.else.bz/#/news
The thing that slightly worries me is that under their mission statement they say “We hope to convince at least one major handset vendor to market them under their brand”. I would have hoped that at this stage, just 5 days before the launch they would already have had a launch customer for the phone. I’m hoping that the website, like so many, is slightly out of date and at least one customer will be unveiled at the launch. One thing is for sure next week is going to be very interesting.