[Where Are The Institutions?]
I originally got interested in AMTX last fall when friend Steve Sacco, in response to my query "One thing I'm sure of, Steve; the Internet needs more bandwidth. Who makes it?" responded, after lengthy consideration "Amati; they have solid patents on the best technology."
The stock market, though, has yet to discover this rather fascinating fact -- and I keep asking myself "why not"? I've been working with institutional investors for a long time now, and, while the persistent small-cap erosion of the past few months (especially vs. the "big" stocks) has left them badly gun-shy, they're ALWAYS on the lookout for a good idea; a "special situation" that can buck the trend. I keep floating AMTX by them (I'm just a humble strategist; they have to do the fundamental work themselves), but so far all I get is either a "not really interested" or a "I don't believe it" response.
Why not, I wonder? Institutional investors aren't exactly stupid -- and they have a LOT of resources at their command. And they ARE greedy; if they think there's money to be made in a stock -- in any market environment -- they'll buy it.
So -- where are the institutions? Amati, it seems to me, badly needs some sponsorship; an institution, or a small group of institutions (yes, they do talk to each other -- a lot) that decide that DMT is a Really Big Story, and, by golly, they want to play it. (Really Big Stories don't need current earnings, by the way. Nor do they need PR; Really Big Stories literally crawl out of the woodwork when the time is right. And when the time is right there's not a darn thing the market-makers can do to hold the stock back.) The sponsorship can either come from inside an institution or from a brokerage analyst; someone, somewhere, who says "I like this, and I believe in it, so I'm going to push it -- and I'm going to keep on pushing it until it pans out".
This has been nagging at me more and more recently; I had been hoping that some institutional sponsorship would surface following the Goldman Sachs conference. Given the subsequent stock action, though, it obviously didn't -- and I wish I knew why the heck not. I do believe my friend Steve -- and the horde of absolutely superb information that so many hard-working people post on this thread; it all leads to the conclusion that Amati DOES, indeed, have the technology -- and that AMTX is, indeed, a Really Big Story. So I keep trying to get the answer of "why don't you buy it?" from my institutional contacts. Thus far, though, I've come up dry.
The stock price will tell us, of course, if and when the institutions finally do "discover" Amati. Deep down, though, I guess I am being nagged by the worry that AMTX may turn out to be just another Gandalf, or another Informix; companies with great technologies that never quite made it in the marketplace.
Just some thoughts as I try to clear my head during a rather tough time in the market...
-- Walt Deemer |
