In short: Alfi (Ticker: ALF (Nasdaq)) is a fresh newcomer in out-of-home advertising. Their IPO was quite recent. They hold a patent for an AI-based application that can target advertising to individual customers/viewers using a camera without compromising customer privacy. Computer vision recognizes gender, age, body type, and emotional state. This is utilized when a potential customer encounters the UI.
I’m not a numbers cruncher; I invest more based on sentiment. That’s why I’ll explain without numbers.
The potential is enormous. There haven’t been real innovations in out-of-home advertising for a long time. Of course, digitalization has brought moving images to many places, but that’s not really an advertising innovation. This, however, is. AI recognizes gender, age, and other relevant tags to support advertising targeting in real-time. Alfi has started on two fronts.
First, Uber and Lyft. Taxis have Alfi terminals that offer entertainment and targeted advertising during the ride. Drivers receive a monthly compensation, which depends on the number of rides and can be significant. Second, other public spaces (airports, restaurants, shopping malls, etc., only imagination is the limit). In Alfi’s video, a potential customer stopped at a clothing store window to look at a life-sized screen, and a model of their size appeared on the screen in their pose, presenting a suitable garment. Very impressive.
This is a small, new company that has only recently signed its first contracts, so there are not many figures available other than market capitalization, but the market is huge, and they have something that others don’t.
P.S. With this stock, for the first time, I had to ask Nordea to open trading possibilities.
Thanks for the opening, I hadn’t heard about this before. At least on an idea level, it’s easy to get excited about this, but… According to the news, they had installed headrest screens in Uber cars where this platform runs. I would guess that these cars would take any idea, no matter how small, that brings in extra income, and the first things that come to mind are ad stickers, food delivery, and now ad screens, which apparently can be used to play Flappy Bird according to the picture. So, based on that alone, it’s nothing revolutionary that someone else couldn’t do. There are already ad screens in, for example, gyms, where ad space is sold.
Then, if we go to outdoor advertising and AI. Personally, I wouldn’t want a taxi ride to be some kind of light show, and my face to be filmed at the same time. I also wouldn’t want that on the street. This is, of course, my own opinion. Targeted advertising has been done online for a long time, and this would bring the same to the street, i.e., “solve a certain problem.” I couldn’t quickly find a demonstration of what this would actually mean. It’s a scary thought that, for example, AI might think a round woman is pregnant and start advertising nursing bras to her. Or mistake a person’s gender and end up in court because of it (we know that’s an explosive topic).
I would like the company to provide at least some kind of clip showing what applications this offers. Of course, it could be that they are still developing them and don’t want to release them because of competitors, so we’ll just have to wait. Also, acquiring those screens costs money, and it will surely take time before the cost is amortized… as a pilot, having Uber as a client is good PR… otherwise, the company’s numbers are pretty useless to look at yet, as everything shows a loss.
I’m trying to grow my portfolio quickly, which is why I have to take a lot of views. There’s plenty to fish for in Nasdaq, you just have to keep your eyes and ears open and be ready to make quick decisions. I know Stocktwits is a dirty word for many here, but somehow you have to find those new targets.
Alfi is a long-term investment for me. I started @ 2.92 USD, and my PT (price target) is X×100 USD. I think this will permanently change the entire industry.
Alfi intends to expand to nine other major cities during 2021. Apparently, almost 30,000 have already registered for Alfi’s system, and this week they seemed to buy 10,000 more tablets. The report states that the Miami rollout was a success. The rollout in Orlando and Tampa both began on July 18th. https://irdirect.net/prviewer/release_only/id/4766194
The CEO seems to strongly believe in this company, but 9 major cities in five months sounds quite ambitious.
The report also states that the CEO says they don’t have a direct connection with Uber or Lyft but would be happy to get one. This gives the impression that Alfi specifically aims to get Uber or Lyft as a bigger partner. We’ll see how it goes
There’s a two-year-old article on LinkedIn (long before the IPO) where the CEO presents his views on revenue and profit development:
Wild profit expectations. Of course, no actual figures exist yet. Q2 will reportedly bring the first numbers, and only in Q4 will we see what all the already concluded contracts yield, as some of them started as pilot projects.
