This was just posted on the Motley Fool website (not their message board). It was written by Jeff Fischer. - Chip
fool.com
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"The other "story of the week" involves 3Dfx Interactive (Nasdaq: TDFX). The stock declined another three dollars this week on top of a six dollar decline the week before -- after reporting excellent earnings.
We've offered several possible explanations for the decline, but one likely set of reasoning comes from a market "insider" who sent us an email following Wednesday's Fool column. The reasoning is as follows:
3Dfx recently did a secondary offering in which the underwriters were
Robertson Stephens, UBS, and Montgomery Securities. Stephens is on the
block to be sold, though, meaning that many employees are looking for jobs elsewhere, and the semiconductor analyst at this company was one of the largest proponents of 3Dfx. That support is currently gone, it is thought. Next, UBS Securities is basically out of the picture due to a merger and the fact that the analyst covering 3Dfx there left for DLJ Securities. He was the second largest proponent of 3Dfx, but he's no longer in that position.
That leaves Montgomery Securities, but the 3Dfx analyst there doesn't
support the stock with any serious conviction. Finally, the email that we received states, "A block of [3Dfx] stock recently came through a market maker and the instructions were to sell it with no limit. The sales drove the stock down quickly. Everyone knows that at this time there is no large house supporting the stock. That plus the imbalance of the restricted stock is causing this."
If the above does indeed represent the bulk of the explanation for the stock's decline, then it has nothing to do with the company's fundamentals and this should hopefully be a short-term blip. This might say something about the company's ability to find good underwriters, though. What 3Dfx needs to do now is hit the road and kiss some XXX [Foolishly censored by the author] to get more investment house coverage for its stock. Arguably the stock deserves attention for what the company has accomplished. At $23 per share, 3Dfx is trading at 12 times earnings estimates while the company has grown net income (not to mention sales!) several hundred-fold each of the past three quarters.
Is this quick slide in the stock a non-event? Obviously not. It's a big event. But apparently it doesn't involve 3Dfx's business -- just the politics behind the stock. So hopefully this will, in time, be a non-event. In the meantime, this is another take on what has been an intriguing slide. At some point we'll hopefully know for certain what is behind it." |
