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Technology Stocks : Purchasepro.com Inc. (PPRO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thedewar who wrote (179)	10/12/1999 8:33:00 PM
From: robt justine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 748

From a post on the Yahoo thread: <<Take a look at this company's principals. PurchasePro.com (PPRO), just started trading.>> Mysykot, shorting a "concept stock" like an Internet play takes tremendous fortitude. The stocks can move against you at numbers far beyond anything that you can imagine (you probably already know this). But you don't really "know" this until you've shorted the biggest piece of crap and start to lose confidence, start to think about pulling the buy-cover trigger as the stock skyrockets beyond your worst nightmares. If you have the "big brass ones", and know that the company is garbage, then you can be successful given time. But you must be convinced through some fundamentals and/or (preferrably) a palpable dishonest stench emanating from the ranks of management. You can often detect this through an understanding of what is in the SEC filings versus the "spin" put on press releases. Regarding teeing up an IPO and waiting for the green light to short it, you are on the right track in looking at the backgrounds of management. It should not be a cursory review. Spend an extra $50-$100 by running the names through the KnowX.com website for records on liens, litigation, personal bankruptcy filings, etc. If you have and can afford a lexis-nexis search, do that. Search the backgrounds of the companies in which the managers have been involved in the past and present; search the subject company's filings for something fishy like the following from your PPRO final IPO registration (SEC424B4): <<In 1998, the Company entered into an agreement to lease its corporate office space from a company owned by members of the Company's Board of Directors>> And also look for items like this from the PPRO filing: <<The Company has paid certain costs on behalf of a company owned by the Principal Stockholder. The Company then bills the other company for amounts owed.>> If you find yourself saying "What the F...?" then you are onto something. eg, "You mean part of the revenues of PPRO is from receiving reimbursement from paying the costs of another company owned by one of the principals?" And then you look further and see that the Principal of PPRO is lending money to PPRO from his personal assets at 10% and 15% just before the IPO. So you follow the dollar out of his pocket as a loan to PPRO and out of PPRO to pay the bills for his other company and then the other company (presumably when it gets paid for selling its product) pays back PPRO to bolster PPRO's top line revenues number. And more: PurchasePro.com (PPRO), just started trading. >>For example, Johnson, 38, has been chairman and chief executive since the company's inception in 1996, the same year he founded Cart-It & Cabinetry LLC, which manufactures casino carts and cabinetry. Before that, Johnson was president of Johnson Safety & Security, a family-owned business in Lexington, Ky. He also owns several video stores in Cincinnati. PurchasePro.com President and Chief Operating Officer Christopher Carton was operating chief of Wilmington County Country Club in Delaware before he joined the company. Before that, he ran another country club. And the firm's chief financial officer, Richard St. Peter, is presently the defendant in a securities class-action suit brought on behalf of investors of Petco Animal Supplies Inc. (PETC), where he was financial chief from 1990 until late last year.<<