Folks,
I am actually working with LHS' software. It's very expensive
and its price/performance ratio is abysmal. Their support is
minimal and I bet they make more money in consulting fees
than selling their product. The reason behind the rise in the
stock's price is this: they have no serious competition. Their
key product -- BSCS -- is an integrated billing environment with
a database no less complex than SAP or Peoplesoft. The know-how
that went into the networking side of the product (GSM, etc.) is
significant, and they've released an early version of their product
at the right time, so now they're riding on the tails of victory,
so to say. In other words, they've got their clients where they want them, b/c no IS deparment of any company will want to abandon a
very expensive product along with countless hours of in-house development and consulting that went into integration work. The clients who can afford this are very large, thus making the likelyhood of a radical shift away from BSCS extremely small. Currently they're
working on the next version of BSCS (already late) and its Web-enabled
incarnation.
My guess is that European market is what's driving this stock so high.
I would have loved to buy a few shares when they opened a few weeks
ago but I had no idea that it would go up this fast. Now I am afraid
to get in, b/c I don't know if it will go up or go down. In short term, it'll probably go up but I prefer cheap stocks, so I'll be watching from the sidelines.
Hope this helps,
Alex. |
