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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mathemagician who wrote (21623)	3/28/2000 3:27:00 PM
From: Mathemagician	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Project Hunt Nomination: MOBI I would like to nominate Mobius Management Systems, Inc. (MOBI) for a Project Hunt report. They are the subject of my upcoming report and it seems they have pongoid characteristics. Their industry-leading open and proprietary archival solution has been integrated with SAP and PSFT, among others and could lead to Gorillahood. An independent G&K analysis would be most interesting. I will, of course, make the extensive research I have already done available to assist whoever chooses to take on this task. Or if you would prefer, I could do the G&K analysis myself. M

To: Mathemagician who wrote (21623)	3/28/2000 5:42:00 PM
From: Mike 2.0	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Mathemagician & all, re:EBPP category,CKFR,MOBI,OPTO It occurred to me, with advance apologies, I did not share the info below to the thread re CKFR, a project hunt. I traded PMs with chaz as the de-facto manager of the hunts, and several other interested parties. I would like to share my comments with all plus additional comments. Here goes... Re CKFR I think I have developed something of a bias against EBPP which may make me not the impartial judge of the company to do a proper project hunt. Then again OTOH maybe it does. What I came up with follows, I don't suggest this is a comprehensive GG project "submission" but here goes. FWIW, although CKFR jumped nicely in recent past, I can't get excited about the business. My knee-jerk reaction is CKFR will remain in bowling alley niches. I do not see a vast EBPP tornado anytime soon. There are other options to EBPP in the B2C market, for example, simply authorizing automatic bank account debits. If I were long CKFR I would be watching how well they do with Bluegill carefully. Of course these comments hardly make for a true analysis themselves. FWIW I was also long Paymentech some years back and got kicked in the teeth after they pre-announced. The subsequent merger (with First USA I believe) got me back to neutral. Automated Bill Payment (the 2nd "P" of "EBPP") is a narrow-margin business where market share not necessarily growth is IMO supreme. And Bill Presentment (The 1st "P" of EBPP) is IMHO hardly a killer app. I've seen plenty of companies render bills in PDF HTML etc...Nothing "proprietary" here as GG defines it. Therefore this is a place we will see some healthy chimps but not gorillas. For me to be interested in this genre, show me "EBA"...Electronic Bill Analysis. Example: So I can pay my phone bill online. BFD. You want to help me, analyze my bill and calculate which plan I should switch to! Ditto my electric bill, etc. If I pay on mortgage or loan, scout me out a refinancing that makes sense...etc. Also, Mathmagician, I looked at the financials of MOBI after reading your other post. They say "possible turnaround" to me, not "gorilla." More like a chimp that is under the weather. MOBI has clearly struggled in recent past. Under GG guidelines, we would have bought them over a year ago still in healthy chimp mode, and sold the position as soon as they showed hints of struggle in expaning their revenues. I urge you to take a hard, impartial review of their current performance versus last year. As I mentioned earlier, similar but not same businesses like Optio (OPTO) at least have some very positive revenue momentum going, but I think the genre is by nature a niche market. OPTO is a healthy chimp, but that's it. Again, I do not see "proprietary" technology as GG defines it. So...OPTO may be a viable chimp and therefore a successful trade. And not to say people have made money trading MOBI off the low, but this is a speculative, turnaround play, and so is out of the GG scope. JMO, but the gorilla hunt continues. Cheers Mike