Jason:
One day I hope you are interviewed by MSNBC. Rarely do reporters give you the opportunity to pontificate to the length you describe or to even offer a cogent response to their questions. MSNBC is about show business not education. In my opinion, Tony could have stood on his head and tapped danced and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Investors who are concerned with the facts got the message loud and clear; those incapable of understanding Tony could call the company and have his message spoon fed to them by investor relations. The point is...if you are concerned about fundamentals, Tony's message was articulate, clear, concise and appropriately measured. If you are only concerned with somebody saying something sufficiently bullish to tout the stock ever higher, well...then...you probably find Tony's comments lacking. Personally, I find the hysterical handwringing over the recent decline to be rather amusing. Let's recap. Nine months ago, QC traded below $19 (split adjusted). Courtesy of the ERICY settlement, the Street now has some glimmer of the company's earnings power and the stock more than quintupled from its low. Now, after this horrific run, the shorts round up a couple of bear stories and orchestrate a nice bear raid.....and the stock gives up 25% from its high. Big flipping deal. How many times to you need to get kicked in the knee before you understand the truth as differentiated from a knee-kicking?
The bears have managed to spook a few momentum players out of the stock, joined by a few less well informed retail investors. So? The stock is still up 3x-4x in six months, which is hardly a travesty. You seem to miss the funniest part. The investment story has become so strong that the bears have been reduced to rehashing Korea...a fundamental non-issue...as the major negative argument. So the ignorant, the short-sighted greedy and the otherwise clueless investors bail out at the first sign of trouble. Ohhh...the horror of it...look at the chart...straight line down for the last two weeks...ohhh the horror. How silly. This is not investing; this is the substitution of a lottery mentality for cogent thought.
Let the stock come in; let the weak hands sell; let's watch as the shorts double up their bets. Management, i.e. Tony Thornley, told you concisely and without equivocation that business is very good. I have NEVER heard management to be so comfortable and so confident in all my years of experience with this company. So I find the recent stock action to be amusing rather than troubling; I also find the hand wringing to be rather unseemly. Good gosh...do you really expect a stock to go up every day, indefinitely?
All the media PR in the world not have made QC's stock quadruple prior to the ERICY deal. All the PR in the world won't hold the stock at $120 if the fundamentals don't stay strong. It's actually sad that you seem to think that Tony's pearls of wisdom on MSNBC are germane to anything beyond the next day's trading price. In the long run...to investors...fundamentals rather than PR drive and sustain shareholder value. Tony's comments on the business were really all you needed to know.
All the best,
Gregg |
