Mike - Nothing is happening that is fundamental to the company or its business plan. If you ask me, things have never looked better for ATG the company. As to ASTN the stock, I guess you should ask the people who are selling. I suspect there are those who were spooked by the Rose Glen private placement (exactly the opposite of my reaction to it), others who thought Phase I of VTS would involve more volume (when in fact it is little more than a live execution testing phase), a fair amount of short termers who got in hoping for a quick pop right after 8/27 who are bailing into weakness now that it hasn't happened. But I do not know a single long term stockholder (not 1) who is selling in fear at this point and the company has $30 MM in cash and no debt, so it's still going to be there at the end of this year when VTS is cranking at close to full throttle, and the Y2K barrier to launching the other pieces of UTS ceases to be an issue. And the volume in this latest "sell off" has been relatively light (today being the only exception, and even today is not that huge a volume for this stock). So as I look at the company, having attended the stockholders meeting, and spoken with senior management before and after, I feel no less confident today than I did 3 months ago - in fact, truthfully, I feel more confident today than I have at many other times over the last 3 years . . . I assume the market will catch up in due course.
Does the expression "shaking ripe fruit off a tree" ring true? I personally think so.
This is not an investment for those with weak nerves or a trigger stomach - but if you think of performance as something to be measured over a 1-2 year period rather than a 1-2 week period, then your nerves might not be so frayed by the short term trading phenomena.
Good luck.
MST |
