AA - 10,000 car trial using black boxes

In today's Telegraph there is a small report in the business section that will be of significant interest to Trakm8 investors. The article is entitled

"AA using black boxes to fix customers' cars before a breakdown"

Now investors will know that Trakm8 are the suppliers of these black boxes.

I won't reproduce that whole article, but it states that the AA are currently running a trial of 10,000 cars fitted with "black boxes" which monitor their systems, sending early warnings of potential problems. This is sent to the AA's control centre as well as members via an app.

Apparently, the test found that almost one in five cars being monitored developed a problem that was likely to cause a breakdown if the system did not flag them, allowing them to be fixed early, reducing the number of roadside breakdowns and cutting the AA's workload.

There is also a hint that the AA will be rolling out the black boxes to both breakdown and insurance members (for a reduced premium).

Now investors will know that Trakm8's partnership with the AA has been established for a few years and that recently they announced the following:-

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/TRAK/12621392.html

However, this news is potentially a further game changer. Whilst Trakm8 currently serve the AA breakdown vehicles and no doubt some newly acquired fleets (via the AA). This trial suggests that the black boxes could be offered and rolled out to each and every AA customer i.e. Breakdown member, insurance member, fleet cars etc.

If successful, and it sounds like it's going extremely well, it won't stop with the AA either. New and existing Trakm8 customers won't want to be left behind.

Anyway, as a holder of Trakm8 shares, I feel quite excited!!

Please note that this is a personal blog and I strongly suggest that you DYOR. With a press article such as this one I have made several assumptions.