GSBC... maybe not so ready to take over the digital signage world

Oh man, I was so excited that I'd be able to do a follow-up post to my original story on GSBC and their weird and wild rollup strategy to the digital signage market that I missed the boat and Dave Haynes beat me to it. Here's a quick recap of what has come to pass:

Back in February of '07 a heretofore unknown satellite company based out of Thailand and operating (to some extent) in Asia decided that they were going to start the be-all and end-all of digital signage companies. They acquired a few of the smaller players in the Asia-Pacific market (namely Wallflower Digital and M-Cast), and then announced that they'd be going public on a US stock exchange, and would attain revenues in excess of $43 Billion by 2012 by using their "patented" technology to run out, aggregate and control all of the big digital signage networks in operation today.

Needless to say, none of that has yet come to pass. Later in the year the company did a reverse triangular merger with a tiny, publicly-traded company whose prior business was taking risqué photos of lady bodybuilders (and I use the term "lady" loosely here). A quick but unimpressive way to get onto a US exchange, the company hasn't done much since then, and has even cut back on the grandstanding.

While Haynes and I can sit around and speculate about the probability of success or even the legality of their operation (there have been some questions), aka has taken the high road and done some actual research into the company's current state of affairs. Needless to say, they don't look too pretty.

My guess? GSBC will die a quiet death before the end of 2008, with maybe a handful of significant investors ticked off enough to pursue options of the legal variety.

Tags: GSBC, digital signage


Disclaimer: the above article is an opinion, and should be used for entertainment purposes only. Bill is not a financial professional and is not qualified to give financial or legal advice.

GSBC to acquire Wallflower

Well, after my last post blasting GSBC's press release things have started to become a bit more interesting over on the other side of the world. Apparently the company is going to acquire Wallflower Digital, the makers of a different suite of digital signage applications, with the intent of using the firm's existing technology and software development resources to further its goals of dominating the Eastern hemisphere.

I have to admit that aside from buying Wallflower's customer base and influence in the Australia/New Zealand market, I don't quite understand the synergies that GSBC hopes to achieve via this acquisition. Normally, if you need a technology, you buy ONE company that has it, not two. Granted, I haven't looked at either m-cast or Wallflower's offering in any detail in quite a while (well, ever for Wallflower), but I can't imagine that they're that different just based on how they're positioned.

Perhaps GSBC is just looking for a way to jumpstart their sales operations, and are using Wallflower as a running start. The press release notes:

Wallflower will be announcing a roll out of kiosks for one of the world’s larges sporting goods companies.

Tony Scott said, “It’s a terrific opportunity for Wallflower to accelerate its international roll out with GSBC and the SmartScreen technology. It’s a great fit."

Scott continued “We bring to GSBC extensive experience in all aspects of Dynamic Digital Signage software. Our R&D team will provide GSBC additional depth and pioneering areas of DDS such as Advanced Analytics, Facial Recognition Analytics and new methods of media deployment."

Still, for a company to make two significant purchases (Wallflower, a 4 year-old Aussie company, sold for $20M) within the span of a week is quite unusual. And of course it's still possible that it's more of a ploy to boost speculation about stock prices in the weeks before GSBC goes public on the NASDAQ OTCBB.

Tags: Wallflower, m-cast, GSBC, digital signage