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Gold/Mining/Energy : Net Shepherd Inc. (WEB) on ASE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crazy Canuck who wrote (163)	6/4/1999 6:09:00 PM
From: Barry K	Respond to of 1252

Wow! Net Shepherd (WEB), Denise and Crazy Canuck. What else do we need? Thanks to each of you. Regards, Barry

To: Crazy Canuck who wrote (163)	6/4/1999 8:20:00 PM
From: WhatsUpWithThat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1252

Comments about several things, CC: You don't always get someone who will answer your questions as completely as he did for me. IR is actually a very difficult role. In many small companies, as in NSI, it is filled by the CFO, but I know from working with a very bright CFO who was thrown into the role of IR how big a shift it is from everything else s/he's ever done. So, kudos to Ric, who has not acquiesced to the rather standard reaction to this role for those without substantial IR experience, which is to clam up, be afraid to say anything for fear of getting in trouble for saying too much. (And if that's not a run-on sentance...) He did mention that they are awaiting the arrival of a new Investor Relations person. I assume that this person will join the company shortly. I think that this is when the investment community (retail investors) will get a chance to better understand what is going on here. I look forward to this person's arrival. Another very positive move, with deeper meaning than it might appear on the face of it. For a small company to hire a pro IR-er is indicative of the strength they figure they're going to need in the role. Not only dedicated time and resources, but experience, to handle an obviously much expanded requirement. If Net Shepherd really has their act together (and I suspect that they do), they will have set up a process where they collect, and then mine, the data they process from these projects. As this data source builds they will soon have a staggering amount of value added information that can be leveraged in countless ways. A real mine field, here: people, once they're on notice about it, are very very antsy about having someone warehouse their lives. Personally, I don't get all worked up about it, but especially in the US, it can be a big issue. That said, you want a really good example of maximizing the value of this information, maximizing in the business sense but more important for us <g> maximizing shareholder value? Check out HLTH, Healtheon. Look at the recent run-up. You want to know why they're so outrageously valuable? Not because of the ostensible business, serving the medical community on subscription basis (revenues from this look very dicey and wouldn't in any case support the market cap). Not because of the community value, serving those who need health info and reaping advertising revenues for each viewed page (getting a bit stale). Because they're collecting all this info about people: demographically, who is interested in what, what types of people with what types of illnesses are out there, and what drug and health info is important to them? This is immensely valuable to insurance companies for actuarial purposes. There was quite a write-up recently about his on theStreet.com. Very interesting. Or look at Walmart, which has leveraged (hate using that word) IT to provide them with a multi-terrabyte data warehouse they've used with remarkable brilliance to get better and better and better...with a concommitant improvement in their share price <g>. In these days of increasing one-on-one marketing, if this indeed is part of NSI's model (ie. collecting this info), there's unbelievable gold in them thar hills. Cheers, WUWT