Bill/trilobyte,
I think the trailing p/e ratio is distorted by the Marcam spin-off, and is not really useful. (I don't think p/e alone is a very useful stock picking tool at all, but that's a different conversation.)
As far as technicals go (and I'm talking about price and volume here, not technology), things look very good indeed to my amateur eyes. Moving avg's are all rising, stock (new incarnation) is making new highs. Value Line will probably up its technical rating once the stock is over 20 :-)
There are several interesting messages about this stock on the Yahoo site, messages.yahoo.com
Here's a good one:
Subj: MAPX
By: mlinsin
Date: Dec 5 1997 1:26 P.M PST
Reply To: Msg. 3 by kellygled
MAPICS is a company that is selling Business Systems for production companies, basically the SAP of the
1970s and 80s.
Their MAPICS XA prodcut runs on IBM AS/400 which is the most successfull midrange system in the
world, but not client server.
MAPICS is around for almost 25 years but it had a difficult past.
It was once owned by IBM which basically gave the software away with its hardware, then it was owned by
MARCAM that used the cash MAPICS produced to develop their object oriented Protean product.
MAPICS actually has the biggest installed customer base (ca. 5000) in the industry, all of them are really
loyal customers and no technology biggits.
The strengths:
- great functional product (over 40 modules)
- great loyal customer base
- indirect sales channel which is the best in the industry
- constant revenue flow through support fee of their customers
- very very strong experienced management
- very profitable
- very good marketing
- once their new product is out (in 1 to 2 years) they can start selling into their customer base (big potential)
The weaknesses:
- "Only" AS/400 based although they are starting to rewrite the product in Java
- "old" reputation
- no real growth potential for the next 12-18 months
Summary:
Great profitable company but currently not a lot of phantasy, but this will change in 12-18 months.
I am in there for the long run !
PS:
I know the company very well, I work for MARCAM who previously owned MAPICS.
Markus |
