Tiny Qonnectis is at present in an embryonic stage, but seems to have an interesting product with great potential. Their flagship product connects energy and water meters to the Internet via Qonnectis' own server and users' website, providing 24-hour real-time accessibility as well as the opportunity for instant data comparison and updates as frequently as every 15 minutes. This avoids the costs of traditional meter-reading methods (i.e. reading by eye or the more recent "drive-by" technology). The new technology has already saved one early customer a reported 180,000 after it spotted a water leak and alerted the user. Early adopters include utilities such as Scottish Water and Generale des Eaux Lyon, plus public sector clients such as the NHS, the RAF and various District Councils (the list is numerous, so please see QTI's press releases for the whole picture). In November 2005 QTI announced a distribution deal with Compteurs Farnier of France, providing potential access to the USA and Canada in addition to the French market.

The business case for QTI seems strong: the product is inexpensive and provides cost savings both in terms of labour-saving and of cutting wastage. Sales include an element of subscription on a five-year basis; it seems logical that satisfied customers will both increase their number of meters in use and come back for further subscriptions after the five-year period has elapsed. The potential market is huge. The real question is, when will QTI achieve break-even?

CEO Mike Tapia previously built up the Talisman remote/drive-by meter-reading business, which was then sold to Severn Trent Water Co around 1997.

Does anyone have any figures on the Talisman sale, or perhaps on Compteurs Farnier? It would be good to get some idea of the current market.


EDIT: New charts added, 21Dec2007.

jmacroesus

All major shareholders of QTI according to my online broker::

Qonnectis PLC
Major Shareholders

Shares in issue: 157.4m 1p Ords
Major Shareholders Amount % Holding
Pershing Keen Nominees Ltd 25,639,856 16.29
Michael Anthony Tapia 20,528,776 13.04
WB Noms Ltd 9,453,214 6.01
Giltspur Nominees Limited 8,740,390 5.55
ALASIA Trading Inc 7,147,138 4.54
Roy Nominees Ltd 5,555,556 3.53
Spectra AS 4,902,361 3.11

Other Directors Amount % Holding
Richard Mann Taylor 1,450,403 0.921


= Director

soul traders

Thanks for that.

Encouraging RNS today. Company clearly working hard to break into new market areas in the UK. (The South East??) There has got to be lots more value in this company as it moves forward. Patience will be the key to success for shareholders.

This is why I like to get into these stocks early and lie in wait.

I'm guessing that this development could be worth at least a few hundred thousand pounds in turnover to Qonnectis, although over what time period it's difficult to say. I'm encouraged by the thought that "County councils typically have several thousand council buildings and sites under their responsibility for water and energy use," as this could ultimately mean QTI's turnover breaks into the millions, and therefore profits.

It's a big step forward, too, as it will hopefully improve QTI's visibility as well as giving it a decent revenue stream for many years to come as the roll-out widens.

Here's the text of the RNS.

Qonnectis plc - Major new orders won
RNS Number:9786B
Qonnectis plc
26 April 2006


Qonnectis plc


Major customer wins in new market sectors in the UK


Qonnectis plc ('Qonnectis'), the energy and water conservation IT services
provider, announces that it has won orders from and begun deliveries to two
major UK customers in new market sectors.


Local authority caravan parks


A UK national water conservation consultancy has introduced Qonnectis' remote
meter reading and myMeter web services to caravan parks on behalf of its local
authority customers. This will allow the local authority to remotely read and
analyse the water consumption of these traditionally high consumption sites,
thus enabling maximised water efficiency and minimised leakage. The first
installations are taking place with a major county council in England. County
councils typically have several thousand council buildings and sites under their
responsibility for water and energy use.


Emergency services


A large UK emergency services authority with over 100 sites is also beginning
multi-site use of Qonnectis' products and services. This is a true added-value,
multi-utility solution encompassing water, gas and electricity smart metering,
whereby the authority's meters will be read automatically every 15 to 30 minutes
for energy and water efficiency purposes. Emergency services represent another
new market segment for Qonnectis.


Both of the above organisations chose Qonnectis because they saw the inherent
value-add in its smart metering solution, which allows energy and water
consumption data to be communicated remotely and securely from multiple highly
dispersed sites throughout the UK back to a central data centre and to be made
accessible via simple web interfaces.


Qonnectis now has over 45 national and international utilities, end user
businesses and public sector organisations utilising the system, and enquiry
levels remain high.


Michael Tapia, Chief Executive, stated:


'We are extremely pleased that these new customers have selected Qonnectis to
help them meet their water and energy efficiency objectives. It is further
testimony to the fact that many public sector organisations are seeking to make
real financial savings in terms of their energy and water consumption, whilst
simultaneously benefiting the environment.

'We look forward to assisting these and the many other organisations who have
expressed an interest in our technologies in achieving their goals and in
propagating the solution throughout their sites.'


26th April 2006

For further information, please contact:

Qonnectis plc
Michael Tapia, Chief Executive 020 8893 4766

Bankside Consultants
Michael Padley/Daniela Hale 020 7367 8888


Editors' note - About Qonnectis

Qonnectis' patented technologies enable the analysis of remote meter data to
facilitate water leakage control, customer profiling, and energy and water
management efficiency. Its products are already being used by a wide range of UK
and overseas utilities including Scottish Water, Cambridge Water, Aquavitae,
Generale des Eaux and Lyonnaise des Eaux as well as large commercial and
domestic users of energy or water.

The iStaq family of products work by sending meter readings to Qonnectis' secure
data centre via SMS text messaging over the GSM network. The data is then
aggregated and published online via utility-branded 'myMeter' websites operated
by Qonnectis. The data can also be sent directly to utilities' billing systems.
Customers can access real-time information via a web browser using the 'myMeter'
service. For more information, please visit www.qonnectis.com.


ENDS

That's just the kind of news I have been waiting for... with increasing urgency. The company should increase in confidence on the back of this and perhaps start to really push this highly relevant technology.
SP certainly reacted!

Hi Dave, good to see you again! It's definitely a great development. I hope it will feed through to some serious SP action, but this stock has a habit of twitching violently on good news and then going very quiet for months on end. Still, if more and more people are beginning to take it seriously, then long term we should have a winner on our hands. The market out there is huge and today's orders are exactly the kind of thing that is needed for QTI to begin capturing the market. I think it will need a few more announcements of this kind, coupled with the reporting of a decent upswing in yearly turnover (bear in mind that the last reported revenue was about 60k!!), to get this one moving properly though. That said, once the t/o crosses the 1 million mark, we could already see this more than double.

WDIK/DYOR etc.

Buy on weakness, I guess.

Turnover for the six months to 31.12.05 was 66,983 compared with 26,050 for the comparable period in 2004.

My point exactly. In percentage terms the increase in T/O looks awesome, but in reality it barely pays for postage stamps.

Posted on ADVFN; passing on the request.

Article is about significant moves in remote metering. Good news if its Qonnectis. Bad if its a muscular competitor arriving on the scene.

Anybody here throw any light on which of the two it is? sp reaction this a.am suggests the latter!!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/26/nmeter26.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/26/ixhome.html

Dave, I will attempt to find out and advise asap.

For your interest (copied this off the QTI website - I hope they don't mind!). The article dates from January but I hadn't seen it before. It shows well just what this product can do for its users.

>> Qonnectis saves Glan Hafren NHS Trust 60,000
The implementation of a water leakage detection initiative by the NHS trust Energy Management team at County Hospital, Griffithstown, has saved the Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust over 60,000 on its annual water bill and will receive an additional 60,000 in sewerage rebates from its water supplier over the last two years. The water meter monitoring service provided by Qonnectis plc involved the use of a Qonnectis universal meter logger and internet based water meter monitoring and analysis on myMeter.info web site powered by Qonnectis.


Local NHS managers at County Hospital, Griffithstown had long suspected that there may have been a water leak on the site as the water bills appeared excessive compared to hospitals of a similar size. Having just completed a successful Qonnectis water leakage detection project at Tonteg Hospital for the Pontypridd NHS Trust, Qonnectis was asked to install a system and provide web services to track water usage at the County Hospital.


A Qonnectis iStaQ-LG GSM-enabled universal logger was installed next to the site water meter at the County Hospital and continuously posted water usage trends to the Qonnectis myMeter.info web site.


When Griffithstown County Hospital NHS engineer, John Jukes, analysed the results on the website he discovered that there was a very high level of water consumption during the early hours of the morning a period when water demand should have been low.


It soon became apparent that there was a leak of 4 cubic metres per hour on the site and trial holes were excavated at positions where the leak was thought to be. Because of the high number of unrecorded service tees off the sites water main, the leak initially proved difficult to locate. When it was eventually found and repaired, water demand on the site was reduced by a factor of 10! < <

Some other users have reportedly saved even more money!

Full text of the article at: http://www.qonnectis.com/News-Events/Company-News/Article-03.aspx

The D Telegraph article mentioned above (diydave - 27 Apr 2006 13:02) seems to refer to replacement domestic gas/electricity meters incorporating some device that enables them to be read remotely. Sounds like a good idea although it's likely to be expensive and take years to fully implement. The markets for Qonnectis are primarily the utility companies themselves and their commercial/industrial customers so it's not obvious that it will have much impact on them.

Hope you are right jmacroesus. But "immediate updates to utility companies on how much energy is being used" and "remotely monitored meters" sounds very like a continuous broadband link to me... which is a bit too close to Qonnectis technology for comfort. Unless, of course, if it is Q's tech! Still looking for confirmation either way.

Jmacroesus - not sure I fully agree with you. According to the article I pasted in post #2, QTI will be targetting high-usage domestic customers. Also if the suspected competitor is ready to trial 3,000 units, that means they are probably at least as far along the road as Qonnectis. Have Qonnectis shifted 3,000? Certainly they haven't sold that many in total so far. Based on the pricing on the Cambridge Water website, which puts each unit at 2,500 for the full five-year i-Staq remote monitoring package, a deal for 3,000 units would be worth at least 3 or 4 million to Qonnectis - great news for QTI if they were to land such a deal though! However, I suspect they would have announced a deal of that size with trumpets and a Red Arrows flypast. However, 2,500 a shot or even 500 per year sounds like a lot for domestic customers, and it could be that the product in the trials is something more suited to the average homeowner's budget. Could be worrying if they manage to undermine QTI's prices though.

The use of the term "smart meters" is not one I have come across in looking at Qonnectis. This leads me to believe that the product being trialled could be from a different company, as QTI's product, as I understand it, is attached primarily to existing, "dumb" meters. It wouldn't necessarily take much for QTI to develop a similar product, perhaps in collaboration with a meter manufacturing partner such as the exisiting partner Compteurs Farnier.

As for eroding QTI's market share, I think an element of competition is to be reckoned with, as the market potential is huge and remote/online reading is clearly the future. It's true that QTI is targetting utilities directly and also that they may have an edge in applications like environmental monitoring, etc, but QTI should not ignore the mass market (i.e. the aforementioned high-end users) if they want to capture a large market share. However, there's no way a small-cap like QTI would be the only player in any of its chosen areas, although there's also no reason why they should get shouldered off the playing field simply because other mfr's are about.

Probably the worst that can happen to QTI, from our point of view, rather than the issue of competition, is that they get bought up by a big co before they reach their full potential. CEO Mike Tapia's previous comapny Talisman was bought by Servern Trent water, and since MT holds 13% of QTI, he has a fair amount of clout when it comes to a decision to sell. Personally I'm hoping that this at least goes ten-bagger before being bought up, although really the sky is the limit if QTI can succeed in remaining independent and in conquering sufficient market share to perform adequately against the competition.

Sorry if I sound like I've come over all sceptical. I'm not, but just trying to be objective. All IMO, WDIK, etc.

One final thought - if there is a rival out there, it could be that the smart thing to do is to buy their shares too. If anyone hears anything, please post it here!

I TAKE IT BACK !!!!!! I have no way yet of knowing for certain whether QTI is responsible for the 3,000 unit trial, but they mention the term "smart metering" of gas and water usage.

See the webpage: http://www.qonnectis.com/Solutions/Energy-Water-Usage/Default.aspx

However, QTI has never, as far as I know, mentioned having a working relationship with EDF, the partner in the trial announced today. Can't see anything about the trial on the EDF website's Media/News page either.

I have sent out a mail to try and get some clarification - will post as soon as I can.

Another news article, dated 24 April, exists on the National Energy Action website. It doesn't disclose the identity of a manufacturer, though, unless EDF Energy is it!

http://www.nea.org.uk/News_releases/?article_id=267

The trial is mentioned in today's Daily Mail too, but again no company identified. (Obviously same brief as Telegraph).
I too have e-mailed Qonnectis shareholder info line for clarification. Telegraph and Mail next stop!

Some useful backgound on smart metering on:
http://www.est.org.uk/partnership/energy/lead/index.cfm?mode=view&news_id=496
Includes the following:
'Providing smart metering to consumers is a bigger task than just replacing around 40 million meters on the wall, and there will be significant cost implications. Gas and electricity meters have traditionally been paid for by suppliers, and the cost tends to be passed onto the consumers through their fuel bills. Deciding if the extra cost of providing smart meters is worth it depends on who will bear the costs, how the stakeholders value their benefits and whether they will be realised.

Different technologies offering different services from different manufacturers are already available. In general, however, energy suppliers do not want the technology prescribed to them but want freedom to implement the most cost effective solution. At the same time, privatisation and the freedom to switch between suppliers means it is important there is compatibility between meters and suppliers.

It is highly unlikely customers will voluntarily install meters, so current policy is based upon the suppliers paying the upfront costs which are eventually passed on in fuel bills. But because the energy supply market has been set up to facilitate switching and there is no distinction between quality of supply, competition has forced prices and margins down. As a result, suppliers cannot afford to invest in more expensive technology because customers are likely to simply switch to a cheaper supplier when asked to bear the additional costs. Customers could even switch to the supplier providing the best meter and switch back to a cheaper supplier under the 28 day rule. All of this has made suppliers wary of investing in smart meter technology.'

More on:
http://www.energywatch.org.uk/uploads/Smart_meters.pdf