There's tons of information on the Metricom site. There is a Metricom club on Yahoo. As usual, you will find varying degrees of bull on the regular Yahoo and RB boards.
In general, MCOM has a very small float so it is extremely volatile. It ran up on expectations when the market was hot, several times going up 10 points in a day. It can trade 20% in a day up and down. It came down almost as fast when the market tanked. There is a significant short position and someone posted that some short newsletter named it one of the top short candidates. I suspect that momentum and the small float is the reason as fundamentally all things should be going right for MCOM.
There are several analyst reports by large houses that you should read. In general, I don't like analysts price targets. They are usually self-serving and no better than a post on a bulletin board or one of the goofy newsletters that sprout up on the internet. However, it is useful to read their reports for data and specifics. Underlying facts are usually better in researched reports than on these boards or newsletters.
As far as performance, subscribers, growth, etc., it is too early to tell. They did no marketing until starting the rollout a few weeks ago. Their legacy product R1 has a small but very loyal group which speaks extremely highly of the service at 28.K and customer service. I don't think you will see any significant numbers for 6 months. The company appears to be conservative, making sure the system has the bugs out before really pushing it. They have lined up agreements with resellers like WCOM and Juno to push it but, so far, efforts have been reserved.
Pricing is competitive in that there really is no competition now. I have DSL at a comparable price but I'm stuck in my office or my home. I also have cellphone web and that is a real joke. Both of these services are down a lot. I think all the new technologies will have periods of perhaps years before they get it right.
When it comes to Boston, I will replace my DSL lines and my cellphone web connection with R2 and save money. That's why I got interested in it. It's the Peter Lynch theory of investing and right now you have MCOM at a very low price.
I have a core position that I've built, contracted and built up. I've also traded the very large swings and written puts and calls at times. It's a very exciting stock but be careful. It is very volatile and certainly speculative at this point.
Call the company and review its website. You will find most of the answers there. The Yahoo club has a lot of information and links that are useful.
I feel that long term, with the small float and the ongoing rollout, it will go past its old high of 109. Institutions will increase their position as this happens and shorts will eventually get hurt. They've done well these past months but in the market the only thing for sure is that nobody is perfect. (In fact, I made a couple of very successful trades that I posted on Yahoo yesterday as MCOM was being held back by shorts coming in at the market. When they capitulated, the stock moved up nicely. IMO it has significant support at 18-20 and should break out to high 30's low 40's over the next few weeks but only if the market does well.)
Again, it is speculative and you should be careful. Earnings are a ways off and the market is not rewarding that right now. However, given that there really is no competition for probably 2 years, a good market will value this company very highly.
Also be aware of others hyping alleged competition. There are many scams and/or hype jobs including a recent one where a sewerage disposal firm was very recently valued at a billion dollars with almost no revenue and no real product when a hired PR firm sent out massive e-mailings that the company was now "high speed wireless" and was fed by thousands and thousands of posts on Raging Bull. People want this type of service and they want this type of stock. As I posted previously, if that other company was worth a billion dollars with no product and no real plan or money (it was all hype in my opinion) then MCOM is worth 100 billion.
Again, you can play with any numbers and argue almost any price from 0 to 1000. That's why this is speculative and fun if you time it right.
CAVEAT- this is all opinion and I know nothing. Please do not rely on this opinion as you will likely lose all your investment if you rely on message board posts. Do your own DD and good luck :-). |
