To: M. Carver who wrote (468 ) 2/2/1999 3:49:00 PM From: Lord Smooth Read Replies (2) | Respond to
In my humble opinion, it is because the company is in serious financial straights (negative working capital of $80 million) has a lot of debt (including convertible preferred) and continues to have trouble consolidating all of its recent acquisitions. They need cash badly. Plus a number of class action suits have been filed against the company for the drop in stock price this past June. Plus we have an IPO of WebMD maybe two months from now. Who knows what will happen between now and two months from now? The IPO can be canceled, a comet may crash into the earth, etc... Also, the connection between WebMD and PTEK is not known widespread. There has been no news release about PTEK % ownership of WebMD. I am still hoping this will be a DBCC, ZD, MALL, etc. look a like, but who knows? Nothign is sure...and therefore I think people are taking profits in the face of uncertainty. The downside could well be 0.0004 however if PTEK goes bankrupt. PTEK is extremely risky. The question to ask yourself is, are you willing to lose everything to make something like 4 times your money based on nothing more but speculative Internet mania? This is a bet, not an investment. At the same time, I think PTEK would make a good takeover candidate for a major telephone carrier. AT&T, MCI Worldcom, even TimeWarner... Who knows... Too bad this company is having trouble consolidating its businesses, for I think it is a great business model that they have. I first heard about this company from a marketing flier I got in the mail a few months ago. I think it's a pretty cool business with a lot of potential. I mean, the stock was $30 this past May when everyone thought everything was fine with the company. Bottom line to me is it is a good company with serious financial concerns and it is a stock that could either crash or fly. Personally, I am betting the stock will fly at some point in the next three months, and I am willing to risk my entire investment to go after this. Maybe a dumb thing to do, but nevertheless, I am doing it.
