In that period, ISDN stock has had an awesome re-rating, from 20 cents (placement price) to over 60 cents as of last week. The best is yet to come: CGS-CIMB's recent report (16 Aug) has a target price of 85 cents following the release of ISDN's 1H2021 results:
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At ISDN's 2Q2021 results briefing last week:
Q: In the previous results briefing, Keith mentioned that Novo Tellus is working with CFO to better give order book visibility and CRM analytics. What is the progress there and what else is Novo Tellus working with ISDN on?
Novo Tellus partner Keith Toh, who has also been a non-executive director of ISDN since May 2019, on the 2Q2021 virtual earnings call.
Keith Toh: First of all, on the reporting I think we've seen certainly at the board level and with Nova Tellus’ interaction with the company, a pretty remarkable change in the level of and the granularity of reporting.
That's not just the depth of what's reported in terms of the pipeline, working capital accounts, risk and profit and opportunity areas across the business but also through consolidation, the span of reporting across the many entities inside of ISDN.
That's shown up in terms of driving some of the informed growth that investors are seeing behind the company but also importantly the rise in productivity at ISDN because the systems have allowed Christine (the CFO) and our team and operations also to operate a bit leaner. We see this as a long-term investment so hopefully the benefits of upgraded systems, more business intelligence will continue to accrue to the company moving forward.
Teo Cher Koon, MD of ISDN.
NextInsight file photoIn terms of the strategic engagement with ISDN, we are obviously very happy with the momentum sustained to date. We credit fully CK (the MD) and the team for building out strategically ahead of demand because one cannot build when demand shows up. 
CFO Christine Ho. NextInsight file photoThey had good foresight, good planning around targeting the right markets, the right verticals, expanding the offerings so that ISDN is selling more than just very very basic motion control. And you're seeing that with expanding gross margins, the changing mix of the business and growing traction that's taking root in software systems, precision manufacturing and some of the other adjacent parts of the core business for ISDN.
So all of that is quite a lot you know in the face of a demand-rich environment and so much of what we are discussing with the management team today is continuing to stay the course in terms of the discipline in the core business, bringing the hydro and clean energy portfolio to commercial fruition and then, as CK mentioned, looking opportunistically at M&A that continues to build out the core offering that ISDN can offer its many customers throughout Asia.
You'll see in the structure of investments like with Whizspace -- CK mentioned this earlier -- the way that ISDN structures these investments is also evolving going forward we think in a positive way. ISDN has increasing amounts of control over time if and when these M&A investments perform, and that allows the company to better fully consolidate earnings and fully exercise control and realize synergies from M&A going forward.
That's an area where we've been also quite active with the ISDN team, lending our expertise and hopefully transferring our expertise into ISDN with respect to structuring and then consummating M&A.
