MPS Ltd

Names masked as I am not sure if those ppl will like it . these are running notes – the reason why I keep it that way is to avoid my own biases – if I get the stock cal wrong, I can go back and interprept them another way and figure out what went wrong with my hypothesis.

I have some interpretations but will wait for inputs from everyone first. None of these guys have biases against or towards MPS and consequently treat these as facts to a large extent.

Inputs from a VP – biz development of a much smaller PBO (publishign services BPO)

Positioning as a full service content solutions provider is
key rather than an outsourced vendor. MPS scores well there.

Aptara – focussing on other industries such as BFSI, Pharma,
HItech and so on – BFSI – for eg., xbrl filing

Spi global is one of the larger players and they hvae the best platform and sales team

Pricing has been slashed –per page over the last few years. so key is to achieve efficiencies through volumes by doing more work processes with the same client.

MPS has strong focus on cost optimization with low value
added work being outsourced to smaller vendors. Also they had acquired a full
service company in the US

A large publisher typically works with multiple vendors like
MPS, aptara

Most of revenues comes from existing customers or large
publishers – slow cycle to get a new customer.

Publisher’s market is quite challenged – not easy to get
traction – companies look at every cost saved.

Only certain companies have scrapped projects and focusing
on optimizing their digital strategy. Challlenges like open source content,
funding and book rentals are putting pressure on these publishers Companies
have stopped producing content itself as things like book rentals, crowdsourced
content are hanging industry dynamics quite a bit

I was referring to this initiative

http://news.cengage.com/corporate/cengage-learning-and-flashnotes-com-to-transform-the-learning-experience-in-higher-education-with-strategic-partnership/

Market size is about $ 1 Bn –not growing – may be 2-3 %; 60% – of the work
comes to india – Philippines is next; then you have third world European
countries – like Romania, bosnia – India is the largest and won’t go away for a long tme

e-learning is challenged in terms of profitability as publishers themselves are struggling to make money there.

Inputs from an ex-employee of MPS

Publishers are very conservative –

Marketing in these organizations are not very strong – very
technocrat driven.

Want to push down prices ever year;

Very labour intensive/skill intensive environment

Manual intervention needs to be brought down – figuring out
a way to take care of the changes in work flow can be an efficiency driver. its purely a function of how you can increaes billing per resource through intelligent technology intervention – so its a good CTO who differentiates one guy from another. MPS is improving but still behind SPI

Inputs from a senior guy in a large competitor

MPS Platform – overhyped – too little too late

Services – content – reinvent the content

Tap the content earlier to increase deal size form a client

For eg:

• Author handling

  • Editor services

  • Pre-press

Post press:

• Conversion

• Re-purposing

• Database enrichment

• Content enrichment – adding photos

without these squeeze-ins, additional revenue growth is going to be difficult.