Conor :
Good point. You would believe from reading HART's reports that their
major competitor is the hard-cable companies. They seem to focus on
households unpassed by hard-cable, for example. However, they should
not underestimate the DBS companies. Some interesting facts :
1) Check out www.dbdish.com/dbsdata.html. There you will find that
since the beginning of this year, the four premier DBS companies
(DirectUSSB, PrimeStar, EchoStar and AlphaStar) have increased
their customer count from 4.47M to 5.38M.
2) Before purchasing a DSS, 45% of owners received their signals
through cable and only 31% through an outdoor antenna. This means
that it is the cable customers who are making the switch to satellites.
3) At least one major DBS provider, PrimeStar, does not require
customers to buy the decoder or dish.
Despite the threat from DBS, I remain bullish on HART : they've
got 200,000 customers writing out $30 checks each month, and they've
got plenty of new markets to expand into. They've just got to find
a way to cut expenses, and show a positive EBITDA in the vast
majority of their markets.
Anyway, the first step is to get their stock back into the 2's.
John |
