Minelab Fy23 Investor Presentation For 2024 - No GPZ 8000?

[phrunt]

Well, the 2023 Full year investor report fell flat for those hoping for news of a new GPZ in the 2024 period.  I'm confident it's not happening as I have been for some time now; they appear to have no new detectors coming out in 2024 after the rush of new products to try build the growth in the Treasure side of detectors with less focus on gold.  They now consider the current sales situation in Africa the new normal and are moving away from relying on the African market for metal detector sales, a far cry from a couple of years ago when every gold detectors box had African prospectors on it, along with their website and designing models with ease of use to target the African prospectors who don't care about learning a complex detector, they just want to find the easy gold as quickly as they can while it's still there with detectors designed for their needs such as the Gold Monster and GPX 6000.  2024 will be all about building sales of the existing new VLF detectors and getting into new markets like India, along with direct selling to the customers to increase revenue.

I'm not overly fussed about no new GPZ coming in the near future, I highly doubt I'd be interested in it, time will tell of course but extremely unlikely I will buy one, especially not for ergonomics reasons, as Minelab's slogan says performance is everything and that's all I care about, and that's going to be the hardest thing for them to improve significantly over my GPZ + X-coils and my 6000, especially as I'm in milder soils and can run my GPZ in normal unleashing its full potential.

You can read the report here

Codan Limited - ASX Announcement - FY23 Full Year Investor Presentation

And you can read the 23 FY results here, although nothing exciting in it, a lot of glamourising.

Codan Limited - ASX Announcement - 2023 Full Year Results

In summary, detector sales slowing, now relying on communications a lot more and they have significantly over taken metal detectors as their biggest source of income.  They're doing quite well selling countermine detectors into countries such as Ukraine but even that's not enough to prop up the lagging detector sales.

Note the bottom line, decrease in African Gold Detector (higher margin) revenues.

I think we all know they significantly over charge for gold detectors.

[GB_Amateur]

Name that detector!  Looks like a Fisher Gold Bug to me.  (From P. 23 of report.)

[Jeff McClendon]

Unbelievable and ridiculous.
 

That photo is used twice in this annual report. It’s the only photo of a hobby detector user where the person sort of looks like they know what they’re doing other than using a Gold Bug with 5” coil at a saltwater beach. But I have been known to use an Equinox with a 6” coil in the surf to avoid snapping off 11” coil ears and to fight black sand noise.

Come On FTP, sue them!!!!!!

[phrunt]

Nice spotting, I didn't even notice that and you're correct, it's a Gold Bug Pro 🙂

The Coil cable placement is correct, the knob position is correct just below the coil cable entry.

That's pretty funny.  I guess the marketing people aren't even sure which detectors are Minelab and just used a stock photo.  Makes even more sense some of the marketing peoples claims about their own products now.

The Gold Bug Pro is a pretty good beach detector I've found, handles the dry and wet sand quite well.

[Steve Herschbach]

I admit I’m surprised. I figured 2023 as year of the coin detector, made sense to go back to gold nuggets in 2024. But then again if the gold nugget market is tanking, Minelab already sells the best you can get for that market, and they can simply milk it. Maybe lower prices on existing product as sales decline. More time to get whatever is next ready is not a bad thing if it helps them avoid the face plants done on recent product releases. 

Or maybe they sussed to the fact that we actually read these things and decided it was not wise to tip their hand this time. There, a ray of hope some can still hang their hat on. 

[phrunt]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

But then again if the gold nugget market is tanking, Minelab already sells the best you can get for that market, and they can simply milk it. 

That was my thoughts behind it, why bring a new product to market with all that investment in R&D and get less of a return due to a lagging market with much of the world in financial strife and a dead African market, they'll just keep it sitting there waiting until the time is right, until then they are already the top dog so will get a bulk of the sales anyway regardless of a new model.

I still don't see what they can do to a GPZ except lighten it up and modernize its wireless etc.  If they can give difficult people normal performance that'd be a dramatic and welcome change but won't benefit me all that much.  I guess they'll finally allow a small coil on it as the 6000's released now and had its sales flurry.

[Gold Catcher]

The big numbers came from Africa, and there not with the GPZ. Since that market has now declined, it will likely also negatively impact other business activities, like the very high R&D cost to develop a (truly) new GPZ. I think they know that in the $10,000+ price class just better ergonomics won't cut it.

GC

[Aureous]

Note that this report has no development timeline as in previous reports in previous years.... The GPZ replacement has already had the bulk of its development costs already spent so all that remains is the 'right timing' to release it, provided that the field-test units are performing as anticipated. A new competitor PI prospecting detector, general revenue decline or overall Minelab PI sales dipping should be the trigger point for release. Perhaps something will appear in the AGM report in late October. Failing that, we wait for FY 24/25 lol.

[Steve Herschbach]

6 hours ago, Aureous said:

Note that this report has no development timeline as in previous reports in previous years.... The GPZ replacement has already had the bulk of its development costs already spent so all that remains is the 'right timing' to release it, provided that the field-test units are performing as anticipated. A new competitor PI prospecting detector, general revenue decline or overall Minelab PI sales dipping should be the trigger point for release. Perhaps something will appear in the AGM report in late October. Failing that, we wait for FY 24/25 lol.

I'd say that sums it up perfectly. Nothing helps flagging sales like a new model!

[Aureous]

On 9/1/2023 at 9:56 PM, Gold Catcher said:

I think they know that in the $10,000+ price class just better ergonomics won't cut it.

In-field performance needs to show an improvement and the ability to find more gold for the end-user. A big ML price tag means that the machine needs to pay for itself. The GPX6000 certainly does that....mine has paid for itself 3x over now in only 15 months. Last year I found 774 bits of gold and already so far this year I'm at over 1,000 bits. The new GPZ needs to show this kind of ability.....plus ergonomics and comfort. For starters, the weight needs to come down to the GPX6000's kinda level for me to even think about getting one. As usual, we'll see......