jperry: You seem to have gone to an awful lot of effort for nothing, reading my posts on Ballard Power and trying to draw conclusions about the validity of my analysis of DHMG, on the grounds that my method of analysis for both must be the same. They are not. You might just as well try to decide whether someone would be a good baseball player on the basis of how well he can play the piano.
Ballard is a legitimate company. It's books are 100% honest. I don't, for even an instant, question the integrity of its management. Nevertheless, I happen to believe the company's stock, at a market cap of over $3 billion, is wildly overvalued. It is a development stage company, so its sales are negligible and there are huge losses. I have looked into its technology at great length, examined some of its patents, and consulted with engineers, scientists, and technical experts.
I believe that, while there is some chance that Ballard may succeed in its goals, there is a surprisingly large chance that its technology may never see light of day. Even if it does, I believe the company may not be in the black from operations much before the year 2007, or later. I believe that the bulls on the stock underestimate the technical hurdles between this company's technology, in its present state, and what it will need to be to be commercially successful. Accordingly, there is room for considerable disappointment in the stock should things take longer than expected, or not happen at all. My "method of analysis" is to understand the technology, understand the economics, and draw a conclusion about the probabilities and the future value.
Ballard stock has done very well in the last year, but that doesn't invalidate my analysis one iota, because my posts focused on what kind of business, if any, the company will have five to ten years from now, not predicting short term price action.. I feel that Ballard is overpriced at 80, overpriced at 130, and, assuming there weren't any breakthroughs in its technology, overpriced at 200 or 500 or 10,000 a share if it happened to go there this year. The only difference in the prices is how much optimism investors have. Ballard's stock price in 1998 provides plenty of information about where the hot dollars are going in this market, but no information whatsoever about the long term economic viability of the technology..
Ballard's task is to solve some very fundamental problems in the science of electrochemistry. Surely you aren't suggesting that the atoms and the molecules are starting to behave more to Ballard's liking just because its stock went up? If you agree that electrons don't check the stock tables before doing whatever they do, then you must agree that the stock going up lately doesn't make me wrong, any more than a lower stock price would have made me right. It will be many years before anyone knows for sure.
My comment about Ballard being ripe for shorting was a short term market call, and identified as such. I actually did short it on the reversal day I mentioned, and covered a week or two later for a modest profit. My comment to Earlie was in the context of a contest he started on an otherwise dull thread, to pick 6 stocks at the end of December, long or short, blowing the whistle at the end of January, with the reward being bragging rights only. My picks started out doing net nothing, then I got real busy, so I never even bothered to check where they were at the end of January. It was a just a contest, not a list of actual positions or recommendations.
Now what in the world does any of this have to do with DHMG, or how I analyzed it? Do you want to wait five years to see how well I predicted the development of an embryonic technology before you decide whether or not DHMG cooked its books? Do you see how totally confused your argument is?
On the positive side, though, given your previous posts, an immersion into my oeuvre has done wonders for your writing skills; so your considerable effort was not in vain. I recommend rereading all my posts at frequent intervals, and, over time, you will find an ability to think clearly that you never knew you had. I look forward to monitoring your progress. |
