This is the link to IWS SEC filing relating to the sale.
Just to save you the detail work, PL paid $400,000 to IWS for all PDI software. $400,000? Seems to me like a fire sale price. $25,000 down and $50,000 yearly (minimum) until paid in full. Seems like a can’t miss for PL.
One interesting note on the PL website about the purchase:
Under the terms of the contract, PL will use the intellectual property and technology assets to enhance its current digital imaging offerings and expand into the professional digital imaging market to further improve workflow performance for professional photographers and digital imaging labs. In addition, key personnel from ImageWare will be joining PL.
“Our goal is to combine best-of-breed features from both product lines while maintaining ease-of-use and the simplicity of our current product flow,” said Chris Burton, president of PL. “We are continually advancing our products to exceed industry expectations and through this acquisition, we’ll be able to deliver robust solutions that combine industry-leading PL level of support and upgrades to the PDI products, providing the professional photographer with new creative, useful tools and capabilities.”
Expand into the professional digital imaging market? I kind of thought that was the business that PL was in before they did this deal.
Whatever. You can read that statement one of two ways. It either means that PL is “enhancing” their product line with the PDI addition, or they intend to rework everything and incorporate the best features of PDI software into their current offerings. The SEC filing does state the following: (Changed company name to PL to avoid “security features”)
PL will pay IWS, in quarterly installments, 12.5% of all newly acquired sales and license revenues of PDI and PL products (collectively “the Percentage Payments”). Newly acquired sales and license revenues shall include only sales and licenses acquired from clients who were not existing PL clients as of the Effective Date; and shall not include renewals of existing licenses from clients that were PL clients as of the Effective Date. If, at the end of any 12-month period, beginning with the Effective Date, the Percentage Payments do not equal or exceed $50,000 (Fifty Thousand Dollars) then PL shall pay IWS the difference between $50,000 and the Percentage Payments, such difference to be paid together with any Percentage Payments due in each final quarter.
So, PL will pay IWS 12.5% of all new PDI AND PL software sales. Seems a bit odd to me. Why pay a royalty to IWS for sales of your existing products if you don’t intend to roll PDI applications up into your own products over time? Nobody knows what the future holds for PDI software except for IWS and PL. I would find it hard to believe that PL would pay $400,000 for an application that is essentially on life support (some dealers earlier this year were offering healthy trade in promotions to hand in your PDI dongle and buy new Darkroom software) just to kill it off. I don’t think PL has deep enough pockets for that.
Stay tuned ImageWare users. Perhaps your software is about to change. For the better.
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