David - Just some other thoughts on IW...
I have a few other stocks on my "watch list". I suppose the best example for these remarks would be MGI software. That stock doesn't have anything like IW's volatility, but they have had a steady stream of revenue-producing NR's, and they will grow revenue quickly. They won't have to wait for wireless to be adopted. Their deals mean money, soon - within a year. But the stock just languishes. It really doesn't trade as much as it should on its future.
RIM and Sierra have product, and revenue, now. But they are hardware, and the Canadian investment community, for some strange reason, doesn't give a lot of recognition to the tremendous profit margins built into software (724 is an exception, but that was an IPO that was largely bought by its users before it hit the market).
So, I think that a lot of the volatility is predicated on the fact that IW is in a nascent market - and their solutions won't hit that market until this year. In spite of the broad range of their solutions, I expect that Symmetry will carry the load for the next year. In 2001, the other products should start to kick in.
Also, there are the concurrent problems of
(a) wireless buildout - how fast will it go? I wonder how many of IW's shareholders are actually capable of running Infowave for the Net, or even Symmetry, for that matter, where they live?
(b) adoption rates - once the buildout is made, how many people will adopt the Infowave product? Will the adoption rate be 10% (exceptional!) 5% (pretty good) or 2-3% (normal) - of customer base?
All in all, when viewed against this background, Infowave has done pretty well. But I must admit, I yearn for a return to the heady days of a $60plus stock price! |
