Re: The holder you knew of who registered to sell in the August 1997 secondary... That would also have concerned me at the time, but in retrospect, there may have been several reasons they wanted to sell:
1) CRPB's low liquidity. Venture Caps often sell into secondary offerings because there's enough buyers.
2) P.R. about a stock seems to peak at the time of a secondary, so it is also a good time to sell.
3) Diversification or to lock in profits.
I would discount the possibility that they knew something bad about CRPB's prospects when they registered to sell before August 1997. After all, CRPB turned in a stellar quarter in the October earnings report. Then CRPB and others were broadsided by the Asian Crisis, but CRPB's Q4 earnings were again unaffected by troubles in Asia. Could they have known about the PC inventory overhang in Q1 of 1998 that led to CRPB's cautionary statements about Q2 1998? Not very likely.
JMHO. (You may have already had these thoughts.)
By the way, from my discussions with the IR personell at CRPB, Asia is not a problem for them. Their business in Asia is actually doing well. I would surmise that the most probable way Asia could adversely influence CRPB is if Asia causes huge macroeconomic problems that drag down all economies, but that's going to take a while with the solid U.S. and European economies providing buoyancy.
There have been interesting comments from semiconductor guru, Thomas Kurlak, that there will soon be a shift in the semiconductor industry dependence on the PC market to internet broadband semiconductors.
Whatever the case, CRPB will be well-poised to provide test probe equip for this new wave of semiconductors. |
