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  5. ADBE: Could you please describe SPSC’s business model, competitive advantages or weaknesses? [Adobe Inc.]
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Q: Could you please describe SPSC’s business model, competitive advantages or weaknesses? What are the key factors that would support a long term investment in SPSC? Would you be confident in their earnings forecast? Could SPSC be a takeover candidate?
Asked by Greg on January 16, 2024
5i Research Answer:

SPSC is a software as a service (Saas) company that provides supply chain management solutions, and is now trading at 12.9x times' Price/Sales. In the last five years, sales growth were solid, approximately 16% on average through a combination of organic growth and acquisition. The balance sheet is also strong with a net cash of $224M. While similar to KXS and other Saas companies, SPSC enjoys a meaningful competitive advantage as a high switching cost software provider. A few other advantages like high recurring revenue, strong organic growth and long runway for growth also help it. On the other hand, valuation is not cheap and the business is not optimized for profitability yet. Given the market cap of $6.6B, it is not largecompared to other large software providers like ADBE, INTU, but still quite large relative to the niche of supply chain management software and peers (like KXS). The chance of it being taken is there, but we would not consider it high.

Authors of this answer, directors, partners and/or officers of 5i Research and/or affiliated companies have a financial or other interest in ADBE, INTU, SPSC.