Intersting analysis from briefing.com before open.
Active Voice Corp. (ACVC) 65: After quadrupling in price in the past four months, the price
advances will come to a halt today as shares of provider of unified messaging and computer telephony
software solutions are being bid lower this morning after issuing an earnings warning last night. Shares
are currently bid down 5 to 9 points lower after Active Voice said that lower-than-anticipated revenue
during Q4 would lead to a loss of approximately $0.50 to $0.70 per share. Unfortunately, this is a
significant deviation from expectations as Wall Street expected Active Voice to earn $0.16 per share
after posting a profit of $0.09 in the previous quarter. Apparently, the company had anticipated a drop
in revenue due to a decline in Y2K upgrades and replacement revenue. However, this drop in revenue
proved greater than anticipated as the "the high volume of Y2K replacement activity at the end of last
year distracted sales people in all of our channels, lowering the number of brand new orders entering
the sales cycle." And while the company sees growing demand for its unified messaging products
following this latest earnings warning, unfortunately, demand for its stock is expected to dry-up this
morning as the miss is significant to prompt some investors to take profits. After all, the stock has been
on a major run the past several months, essentially doubling in price since the start of the year. Just last
week, the stock received a good pop when Active Voice announced that Microsoft (MSFT 95 3/8)
had chosen the company's Phone Dialer as its core call control technology for Windows 2000. The
Phone Dialer is a voice and video communications application developed for Microsoft and packaged
with Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system products. With the deployment of Windows 2000,
this product should prove to be a winner for Active Vision. However, today the stock will take a break
and could be one of the major losers of the day as money flees to other hot stocks. - RN
So at what price is ACVC a buy? I say $16 presplit. (Doesn't this sound odd) Earnings reports are going to be negative and more selling may occur between now and then.
Closed today at $25 1/8. High was $30, low was $23.
4.0M in volume. Saw the target of $48 for 12 months by the analsyt in the previous post. Institutions held about 1 1/2M shares. Today was mostly retail investors selling judging by the size of the blocks traded. Next week the institutions will decide ACVC's fate.
Jack |
