Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : CustomTracks Corporation (CUST) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul A who wrote (1527)	7/17/1999 10:11:00 AM
From: Tom Hua	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2514

The company is CustomTracks, and not only is its provenance a bit peculiar, but at first glance, it seems to be your run-of-the-Web number, light on substance, heavy on smoke and mirrors. But, our man insists, it's the real thing, and he owns a mess of it. If the name doesn't ring a bell, incidentally, perhaps it's because the company used to be called Amtech and is soon to be called ZixIt Corp. The stock trades in a very narrow range: Over the past year, it has been as low as 3 1/2 and as high as 90. We have to say it is rather volatile: In May, for example, it went from under 50 to 90 in a couple of days, but couldn't stand the altitude and has come back down to around 45. The point, in any case, is that it goes up like a rocket and down like a stone. Another caveat worth citing is that it's a chat-room item; in other words, it has a beyond-the-fringe claque. But hey, a dog doesn't choose its fleas. As for fundamentals, the company has sold off all of its old operating businesses, so it has no sales. But rest assured it is losing money, some $2 million a quarter, as it shells out dough for R&D. To its credit, it's blessed with a potful of cash -- close to $80 million, according to the last 10Q -- more than enough to cover the $20-$30 million it anticipates spending this year to bring its superduper online products up to speed. Those products -- we thought you'd never ask -- are an Internet transaction payment system and a digital signature system, both of which are supposed to come to market before the leaves fall, but in any case, before yearend. What has got our friend so uncharacteristically excited is that CustomTracks, he's convinced, has the answer to perhaps the most vexing problem for Internet users and certainly for doing business online -- namely, security. Whether it's sending e-mail or using a credit card to pay for some foolish trinket you couldn't resist buying or transmitting deep-dark corporate secrets (the boss has a new squeeze), the company's systems, our man proclaims, are the cutting edge in security. Not a hacker exists anywhere on the planet, he gleefully assures, who can break its code. While he's not untutored in things technological, our friend is by no means the latter-day incarnation of Albert Einstein (he wears his hair differently). But he has done due diligence, and he talks Texas (CustomTracks' home base is Dallas). And he waxes almost lyrical on the virtues of David Cook, the main man at CustomTracks and founder of that famed high-tech enterprise, Blockbuster, and Mark Tebbe, whose Lante Corp. provides the software for the transaction payment system and who seems to be something of an aging tech wunderkind (the poor lad's all of 38). We trust it isn't that the strain of selling short in the greatest bull market in history has finally gotten to our friend. We prefer to believe that his investment eye is as steely and penetrating as ever and he's really found a good one, even if it's a long.