>>Bear Down wrote: let me guess, MAWI ?
Hmm, maybe someone can read minds. MAWI and others like PFCK look questionable. At the least, they don't look like they're worth anywhere near the level that they're currently trading at. But not to single those two out, there are a lot of weird ones, including a former carwash and many former canadian mining operations. Also, declaring yourself an incubator has become the most graceful exit strategy for companies with struggling B2C operations. I'm including a list below of various companies associated (whether fairly or not) with the internet 'incubator label'. Chip in with any thoughts. I'm tired with investigating all these "incubators" so I won't pursue any interesting tidbits of info unless you guys can shed light on any of 'em.
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
Here are some more of my random thoughts. Someone on the finance.yahoo.com board said that MAWI's virtualgrocer.com CEO had a run in with regulatory officials. It's probably just hearsay from a short-selller, but I wonder if there's any public database I can tap into to look stuff up.
Anyway, in general, I'm concerned when these venturecapital/incubator's are: 1)OTC BB, 2)lines of business include stock-touting, AND/OR 3)online gaming/casinos.
MAWI is in the business of deluging people with PRs about small cap OTC BB stocks. Past clients include the most infamous of all ? SNMM, which at one time accounted for more than ó of MAWI's sales, I believe. And MAWI apparently licensed/used SNMM gaming software and MAWI invested in SNMM. For PR on their virtualgroceries.com, they tickerspam names like PPOD WBVN, for their VC operations, ticker spam with RRRR CMGI ICGE, for workfire.com caching biz, spam with INKT NTAP and for a regional ISP biz they spam MSPG VRIO. Their investorpackages.com specializes in stock research for these tiny companies.; GLBN is another with their microcapcenter.com; Coincidentally, it appears that GLBN has been a client of MAWI's PR service.
Speaking of which,
"SAN BRUNO, Calif--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 1999--M&A West, Inc. (OTC BB:MAWI - news), a company that develops, invests in and operates Internet and technology-related companies, announced today that it has added John Flanders to its executive board of directors.
Flanders is currently the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of GlobalNet Financial (Nasdaq:GLBN - news) where he was responsible for the development of the highly successful finance portal America-iNvest.com" [I do believe I remember seeing a MAWI recommendation on that site!]
MAWI also jumped on multiple bandwagons with no synergy between these disparate businesses -- 3 pokemon sites; linux-funding; small ISP; caching, web grocer, etc. MAWI boards sure are busy, although I can't proclaim that insiders or paid folks are posting, which was the case with OTC BB HRCT.
And these unusual little equity research firms issue aggressive buy recommendations and issue seeminly-outlandish price targets. Some group, I believe 'Griffin', issued a price target this week calling for a gain of a few hundred % on MAWI. And www.investrend.com / "PUBLIC ANALYSIS & REVIEW" has done the same, for a lot of these companies.
Haunting similarities to the SNMM blowup?
2/10 messg board chat by Scott Kelly, president and CEO of M&A West , Inc. who commented:
'This sale not only get us out of a controversial industry, it gives us a significant profit based on our development and marketing costs. We are also negotiating the sale of our two dozen gaming and sportsbook-related domains.'
Does anyone remember when SNMM was high-flying and applied for a listing? An exec there was quoted as saying that they want to get these old unrespectable business (like porn) behind them. Then they get busted by the Canadian mounties.
It's a strange world there on the OTC BB. The ratio of "coming soon" product announcements to sales dollars approaches infinity. The companies change their names and their tickers (and their business plans!) more than their executives change their underwear. Leaving little history to track down?
- Netconductor.com |
