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Technology Stocks : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TheBusDriver who wrote (11206)	9/23/1999 8:35:00 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17679

I don't work on Wall Street, so take my answer with a grain of salt, but I would say that there are several different things that could lead to analyst coverage. First of all an analyst who covers the industry could conclude that he should be covering Ampex and go to them for information. Secondly, Ampex could court an analyst or several analysts and convince them that Ampex deserves their attention. The other way it could happen would be for Ampex to do an IPO of iNEXTV, or some other division. The underwriter doing the IPO would have an interest in seeing a healthy market for the stock and would introduce coverage. Many mature companies with a market cap under $200 million have a hard time getting coverage because they are neither big enough, nor exciting enough to attract attention. Ampex also has the disadvantage of an ugly capital structure (the negative book value and the redeemables) that would make most analysts head the other direction. The third reason that they don't have coverage is that Bramson has been very conservative in that he didn't want to take his case to the analysts until he was sure that he had all his ducks in a row. He has said that you only get one shot at it, and you want to make sure everything is right before you take your case to Wall Street. I thought that last quarter would be the quarter, but apparently the time wasn't right yet. At this point I would guess that it will this quarter after earnings are announced, but I could be wrong again. I can't imagine getting into 2000 without coverage, and if they do an IPO of iNEXTV I think the coverage will come sooner rather than later. Apparently Ed is now ready to take his case to CNBC. Can taking the case to Wall Street be far off? Or maybe that is where he and Karen were earlier this month... Carl