ET, You are right and wrong. I must admit that Antec is looking like a looser and it might be a good time to dump it, but there is, or was, and maybe will be, really a reason to hold on and that is that the cable infrastructure needs to be fixed.
TCI is the largest cable company and people have been saying they are on, and off, and on again with 3 billion plus in spending to bring on new systems. Well, TCI has been very vexing and from what I've been able to tell, this has been true for most everybody.
Now, people especially look at TCI when thinking of Antec because they are a majority shareholder and they've always used Antec in the past. It was very promising that when they established the joint venture to engineer systems upgrades, that they were going to chanel a lot of this spending through Antec.
Perhaps that has changed, but also maybe not. It is very confusng to try to guess why TCI is saying they want to sell their portion of this venture. Maybe they just see a chance to make a good profit and raise some much needed capital? I don't know. Who will be the new partner? Will this help Antec gain more non TCI business?
Anyway, now we read that Antec is going into cost cutting mode. I had thought they had already done a lot of cost cutting, but now they plan more. This could be just good management, or a real desire to stem a problem year because they just don't forsee the money coming in. Again, I don't know.
It wasn't long ago the CEO was saying they would be very profitable as soon as TCI started spending. Now, do these announcements mean they'll pass up on Antec. Wish I knew. I don't think you'll get any answers from Antec IR on that one.
So, I agree with you that it's a bad reason to hold a stock just because you're down on it. I've held it pretty much for that reason and because everytime it gets down to these levels I think it looks like a good hold. I held it from 16 down to 8 last year and was just about to sell this year when I was even, but decided to hold on as the TCI spending looked like a serious winner.
Now, I don't know. My gut feeling is I'd like to dump the company and move onto better investments, but I hate to sell at lows.
Regards,
Mark |
