Key telephone systems, professional services, managed services and the company's OneStream voice and data network jumped off the page as the profitable parts of the business to focus on, she said.
Core strengths
Bjarne Munch, research analyst for IT industry watchers Gartner, believes that despite Commander's financial woes, its product and services offering is compelling.
Munch credits Commander for building a next-generation IP network, OneStream, an investment he feels the major carriers are still playing catch-up on.
While the carriers are still tapping the last few dollars from their investment in Frame Relay and ATM networks, OneStream is based on the MPLS protocol. It provides carrier-grade IP telephony and VPN, and is "application aware" -- built for such converged applications as presence and unified messaging. It's these applications Lacaze describes as the "sexy end" of the communications market.
Munch says that Commander has made the right investment in managed network services to compliment this network rollout. As IP telephony becomes mainstream, he says, organisations will seek more complex applications to derive value from it, and will soon realise they need external help to manage them.
"Commander have a good, sound strategy for network services - they seem to understand the value proposition," he says.
"I am no financial analyst, but I find it hard to believe that Commander won't successfully get through this phase," he continued. "It comes down to execution now, whether they can get their costs under control."
Drowning in debt
BBY analyst Mark McDonald says Lacaze is doing a good job in terms of getting back into a position of stability in terms of cash flow.
In the January and February of this year, the company bled AU$100,000. It earned AU$7.7 million in customer receipts and salvaged AU$10 million from the sale of Unitel to M2 Telecommunications, offset by AU$14 million in redundancy payments and a further AU$3.8 million related to past debts.
"That's a significant turnaround from the six months to 31 December," according to Lacaze.
McDonald agrees. The company is cutting down on its appetite cash, he says, in an environment where its debt is fully drawn. Commander doesn't have any recourse to further borrowing.
"The single biggest issues is Commander's very high level of debt," he says. "It appears that the asset sales thus far hasn't made much of a dent in that debt. You get the impression that those funds have largely being used to assist in the company's working capital requirements."
"It is difficult to image that we'll see this situation change in the short term," he said. "Their position remains very tight. The share price isn't going to go anywhere while these debt issues remain. We're unlikely to see significant new investment until these issues are resolved."
"I do believe Commander's management, with their stakeholders, have viable options," he concludes.
"They're hopefully a survival story. But the jury is still out."
