Snake, one month ago when the stock was $6/sh, many of us (including me) told you that this was not a good time to be short. I warned you that we were watching your strong short predictions and that your credibility was on the line. Subsequent to that, the stock rocked up to $8-9/sh on the ATT announcement and your second short positions at $7.375 and presumably at $9, for a $8.45/sh cost was stopped out at $8.625. Now we don't know what your short cost was for your latest diatribe and urgings for shareholders to go short, but let's say its between $8 and $8.50/sh. This latest short position of yours is also misguided. Let me tell you why.
I just talked to an Oppenheimer salesman who was in the office in NYC when Keely and Doug Kimball (COO) were talking with Oppenheimer salespeople. His comments were very instructive and interesting to me. His opinion is that ATT wants to get much bigger with IFCI and wants them to be a larger company and may help them get that way.
He is not allowed legally to tell me whether OppCo is about to publish a report but when I indicated that rumors are all over the chat boards about OppCo, he indicated that since he isn't the director of research he didn't know the particulars but in his opinion, it is not a question of whether, but when. He said it could be today, tomorrow, or the next day. He was very very excited about this company and ATT's needs (let alone all the RBOCs) to design, engineer, and lay fiber. He was also very very impressed with Kimball and said he can talk to the smallest cable operator in Podunk USA and to the highest echelons of ATT. Kimball is running the company and Keely is out and about making deals.
On another point, I attended a Morgan Stanley breakfast this morning on telecomms and the analyst said that in the last two months all the RBOCs have dramatically increased their DSL budgets. The race is on to provision the networks to handle broadband. ATT's $100 Billion of spending on cable is charging up the RBOCs to increase their commitment to providing bandwidth. Increased use of fiber is the obvious effect.
All this is in support of my statement to you that this is again not the best time to short IFCI. This next move for IFCI is more likely to be up to $12/sh, not down to $6/sh. IFCI has a lot on its plate now and Keely can be credited for identifying early on the future out-sourcing needs of the telecom industry. He is not the best spokesperson for the industry since he tends to exaggerate, but that personal quality can be tolerated since he also built a company from nothing (I repeat,..nothing..) that is now able to get a legitimate multi-hundred million dollar contract from ATT that will last many years. This build-out will go on for as much as 10-15 years as the maturation phase will only occur when everyone has "fiber to the curb". Snake, I don't understand your posts. You again, don't seem to be using all the data, you are just focusing on what you think is an important earnings shortfall ($.01-.02/sh) Keely recently re-emphasized his confidence in a $.60/sh number for this year and he has always hit the marks he set for the company within a few cents. I repeat to you, this is not a good company to short at this time, there are much better opportunities elsewhere. |
