The only negative I'm hearing is low sales numbers. But like you said, it's early in the game.
The PR the other day of selling their kits to a 700-employee company was pretty laughable, though. Are they really so early in the game that they need a PR for every sale? Heck, we're a private company and I don't tell my partners and fellow shareholders about every sale unless I make a particularly large one. I made two sales yesterday they don't even know about. Because making those sales is just part of my job. And if the figures put forth by a YMBer on the subject are correct, each of my two sales yesterday is worth more in a month (with a CoGS of zero) than AVR's announced sale would be worth in a year.
Maybe we should be public. ;)
How is the transition from Amex to OTCBB handled? Hopefully there's not a lag that results in them being untradeable for a while. Hopefully they've already gotten the required marketmaker signoffs (I can't see any MM not willing to make a market in it). I really expected to see it open today with a new ticker.
I share your opinion that it'll be a lot more liquid on the OTCBB, where the spread can be a fraction of a cent rather than a whole cent. And compared against the whole universe of Amex companies, it's not a very good one. In the OTCBB universe; not bad.
I saw the reverse of this happen a long time ago. I was very actively (and surprisingly accurately) trading an OTCBB whose ticker was FTEL. They made telecommunications equipment including a proprietary NIC that was speedy for its day. In much the way ZyXel had modems that could do 16.8k and 19.2k, providing they were talking to other ZyXel modems, when the standard was 14.4k.
To digress a bit, those ZyXels were *amazing*. I set up, via Procomm Plus Aspect scripts and a BBS, an automated data synchronization system for a medical testing company with a couple dozen satellite offices around the country. Their Seattle office simply could not connect to our BBS because of the line noise, which was repeatedly tested and though the phone company confessed the noise was present, it was within limits. The BBS box was loaded up with ZyXels but all the other offices used generic 14.4's. I sent Seattle a ZyXel and it instantly connected at full speed. You could pick up the phone on one of those modems and it'd keep going!
Back to FTEL.
They seemed to be doing alright and I was doing very well trading them while they were on the OTCBB, but once they started making noise about Naked Short Sellers, I took a powder. That's always a red flag. It's one thing for relatively uninformed investors to make that kind of noise. Quite another when it starts with people very close to the company and even worse when it's the company itself.
They moved to Amex, and everyone was singing their praises and counting their money. As soon as they moved, it became very untradable. Hardly moved at all. And when it did, the direction was usually down.
They're now trading on the pinks at less than a penny. I think the highest price I ever sold it for was in the $5+ range when it was OTCBB. Trying to find historical quotes for defunct tickers, but having no luck. I think it peaked in early 98.
Kinda funny reading some of the conversations in the old thread. Especially in light of the fact that I had become "SI Admin (Bob)" but nobody knew it. It was especially funny when it became public knowledge. The conversation had moved to RB (as had so many OTCBB forums when I wouldn't throw people out for "lying" when they said bad things about companies) and I remember when the hot topic was whether SI's new sheriff was "Our Bob Zumbrunnen".
Anyway, I think AVR's stock will be a lot more actively traded on the OTCBB. I can't begin to hazard a guess whether it'll perform well. But I like the idea that perhaps I'd be able to get out of it at $0.064 if I wanted to, rather than the $0.07 I'd never get because the Bid hasn't been there in a long time.
OT: Pretty happy right now with my recent CIEN purchase. SANM coming up to screw the puts on expiration, and ELN hanging in there like it might just do something next week. |
