advalorem,
This isn't the first article I've read where disparaging opinions about the management and executives at Value Line were offered.
I think it was Chris Byron that has written at least two unflattering articles about them in the past, one of them quite recently.
And I once had a brief encounter with someone who said he was a Value Line employee, and when the conversation got around to whether or not Value Line was a publicly traded company, he just clammed up and wouldn't talk about it any more. We had to change the topic. Sort of an awkward moment for both of us.
My guess is that the allegations of difficult relationships between management and employees is probably correct. I know from at least one Wall Street analyst that I used to know that compensation issues are a huge problem with many Value Line employees. I'm not taking sides here, merely acknowledging that problems may exist.
As for me, I'm mostly interested in the products, not the company. I believe that they've got one of the best product lines available in the business today. The only problem I see that they have is the cost of the products. I think most people shy away from them because of the costs. And they don't seem to offer any multiple product discounts either (at least not that I have ever found). Sometimes they'll have a brief introductory offer for any given product (such as Investment Survey for $55 for x number of weeks), but that's about it.
I'd like to see them do better as a company, but my interest there is selfish. I believe that the more revenues they have available, then the better the product mix they will have to offer, and the better they would be to hire and retain top analyst talent.
But as things now stand, I see their marketing efforts as somewhat anemic at best. And in all fairness, I should add that I have no idea whatsoever what their operational cost structure currently looks like. I suppose it is possible that they're doing the best that they can with what they currently got. I just strongly suspect though, that's there's a lot of room for improvement. Just my opinion, though.
KJC |
