NATS.....They made some bad aquisitions that pummelled their earnings. They have sold off those non-profitable businesses and returned to the way they were doing things when they were making good money. If you look at this MarketGuide link, you can see what actually happened to their earnings after taking on these aquisitions. If they hadn't taken care of the problem when they did, they just might have gone down. Between 1997 and now, they have been to the depths of hell with their stock. I wasn't fortunate enough to have bought the stock when it was way down there, but then, the way things looked at that time, I probably wouldn't have bought the stock anyway. But look at the past few qrtrs. They have turned the company around, started doing some investment banking work again, and they are making money again. They really have a lot going for them.......except that they don't have the backing of the Wall Street big pigs like Ameritrade, Etrade, etc. They haven't done an IPO for quite some time. I guess they didn't really have the capital to do them during the time those aquisitions were bleeding their cash reserves down. One decent IPO and they could make 2 times their present market cap in one qrtr. In 1996, they made 1.57 per share.....and in 1998, you can see where the bad times kind of came to a head, losing 2.46 in one qrtr due to write downs from getting rid of those companies. 1999 marked their return to a slight profit, and in 2000, so far they have earned 23 cents per share. They are forecasting record revenues for this past qrtr. I assume with the recent volatility in the market, all the brokers have been swamped with business. This firm is self-clearing....so all the margin proceeds go right in their pocket. Look, this is a very small cap company, and it is a speculative investment. Maybe they won't make the big time, but at a cap of 16.2 million, it's too cheap for me not to buy. I am sure there is someone else looking at this company and their cap and thinking about all they could have for such a small price. So I hold it. Look at this 5 year chart and take away the spike from last year, draw a straight line from the bottom to the present price...and tell me whether one should sit the stock out. There are 122,000 shares short. That's 2-3 days of average volume. That fella Dan bought at a bad time. Of course, Dan would have actually had opportunity for a double in 3 years if he had held thru the bad times. But I doubt he did. He asked what the catch was....well the catch was, NATS was about to get pounded unmercifully for making some bad investment decisions. According to this chart, anyone that has been bullish on NATS in the past 16 months....has been right. There are 1.9 million shares outstanding in NATS. Look around at NATS's competition and weigh what they do against the others. Look at the website they built and compare it to the others that are up and running. I haven't really seen any other websites that offer more than what NATS offers. If you think they don't offer it, look again. You can get level 2 through their affiliation with DBCC if you want it. You can get investment advice thru a live broker for a few bucks more if you want it. They have real-time level 1 streaming
portfolio tracking. They do investment banking. They do their own market making. They are self-clearing. Ameritrade doesn't do any of that. If there is anything this website doesn't offer, call them and ask them to add it....and I bet they will. Time is running out for that 5 free trade promotion. That's $100 bonus for signing up. They will probably get a million dollars for their work for TRUC. I haven't seen the contract myself, so I can't say for sure, but I guarantee they aren't doing it for free.
finance.yahoo.com
yahoo.marketguide.com
nscdirect.com
finance.yahoo.com
This is the last I will say about NATS. I feel it's kind of silly to have to defend this investment. If I'm wrong, well it won't be the first time. All the research is out there. It is not my job, or place to convince anyone of this investment. This is not investment advice either. |
