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Mark.. I agree with everything you had to say and I have more! I have been watching this thread and Yahoo for ages and your post has got me in the frame of mind to finally chime in. I started loading up on this stock in late 1996 when I did a web search for every stock involved in digital telecommunications. Lucky for me they were at the start of the list. What really got me going was when I brought it up on stocksmart, it had an owner's equity of 40+M and market cap of 32M. I went to the annual meeting in March 0f 1997, and it got me more interested.It all seems to fit. With all the new types of communications (TDMA,CDMA,GSM,...),the move for state and local law enforcement to digital in the next few years, upgrades to the systems for military communications (MILSTAR), their JASA contract for aircraft communications systems, Navy ship communications (COBLU) and the digital battlefield project with Harris Corporation for ground forces. As far as I can tell from researching other telecom investments, the government is going to spend mega on converting to digital. Lockheed Sanders, Hughes,Harris Corporation , TRW,...., not a bad list.New entry into other branches of the government, work with foreign governments is on the upswing, additional SCALPEL type contracts on the horizon, received first royalties on the Erricson chip they developed in Q-1 of $4,500. (Erricson didn't develop the freeset 1900 handset to sell 4500 0f them!!) Trend will be longer production runs, and this leads to higher margins, interest on over 12M in cash VS 5M last year, government policy has now changed to pay contractors such as APSG faster will only help, according to their web site, they are trying to hire 48 additions employees and it appears they have hired more than a dozen since the January 5, 1998 date of the 10K which listed 592. Seems they have been adding a new large building each year and they have options on 3 more at their campus over the next 5 years. The digital age for voice and data has just now began and I can't help but think that Applied Signal can have about as much work as they can find employees, and the technical skill shortage is the same reason the big guns are happy to give APSG work. At the time of the annual meeting I got a lot of people into this stock with a stated goal of $10.50 by December, 1997. We blew past that, and I agree with you that double that on December 10, 1998 is not out of range.I can't tell you how much progress this company has made in a year or so. I have been on every conference call for a year and a half and each gets better, and the management gets better. In the beginning they got a contract equal to a years sales and didn't even do a press release. We have come along way!! Just the opinion of a guy who loves to do research!!!!!! |
