Here's the Barron's reference to INFM:
<Up and Down Wall Street, Part 2
December 6, 1999
Avner Mandelman is not your usual investment dude. He operates out of Toronto, is an engineer by training and a money maker by inclination. His professional vita includes stints running the research department of three Toronto brokerage firms. His specialty is technology. And at the start of this year, he launched a hedge fund (or, as he prefers to call it, performance fund), with a modest
amount of money but a lot of smarts and it is up something over 50%. Avner, we should note, is not a big fan of leverage.
He also likes Infinium Software, whose shares sell for around 5 1/2 . The company wound up last fiscal year, ended September, in the red. Which he blames on some bum management decisions, "loss of focus" (which may
have something to do with those bum decisions) and product transition (the tech equivalent of the weather).
Avner reports that the old CEO, who owns 20% of the stock, has returned to the helm, closed down some losing product lines and is busily "Webizing" Infinium's chief product, which is software for financial management, materials management and business intelligence (which
may or may not be an oxymoron). The company's
expertise is in what Avner calls "the AS/400 operating system environment." Infinium has 1,800 customers around the globe and boasts a 90% retention rate.
Revenues work out to about $8.80 a share, and the balance sheet, Avner avers, is "ironclad," with over $3.50 a share in cash. In other words, he reckons, you're buying the stock, in effect, for $2 a share. Cash flow, incidentally, is 80 cents a share.
Avner thinks the company will be back in the black this new fiscal year. He sees Infinium's $1.60 a share investment in R&D paying off to the tune of $1 a share in earnings within two years. And he modestly expects at least a double in the stock.
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