8 Comments

If they can’t leverage sales growth, then no reason to own.

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Wolf I just love your style and the depth of each stock that you cover. Keep up the great work. You're honesty backed with facts is very much appreciated by me

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My favorite utterance - "go to the F...ing bank like the rest of us". Made my day 😂

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I was pretty disappointed in this quarter and jettisoned a good sized block of shares. I suspect the margin problems are a competitive issue e.g. taking less margin when going head to head with well funded competitors.

My real issue though is that revenue pre-announcement. Selectively releasing the good stuff (more revenues) while ignoring the bad stuff (exploding expense line/ poor margins) has a dishonest feel, and when faced with that I’m not holding for better days on something that doesn’t exactly look cheap. I made a mistake here, and when I make a mistake I accept it and move on.

At half the current price I’d be tempted to give it another look. This is not really far fetched. This was a historic revenue quarter. Go back to a mere 9 million in revenue with these margins and expense structure, and they are suddenly bleeding, but the expenses have been on a steady rise.

Hard to sit through that possibility when recent management communications don’t inspire confidence. Pre-releasing revenues the way they did was a self inflicted wound.

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You're probably right on the margins. I've played the RFP game against bigger boys and the temptation to take less to win it is real. 40 points would be acceptable but not with that rising opex. Feels untouchable until after their Q1 and then maybe re-visit. Way too many higher potential plays out there than to risk anything here for a while.

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Agree. Like your stuff btw. Found you due to our common interest in this company. Fortunately it wasn’t an especially expensive mistake. Entry point matters a lot.

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Glad you found me. Feel really fortunate to get out at .71 a little while back. Can't say I quite predicted yesterday, but I definitely felt the upside was limited and not worth the hold and wait.

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Out at .71 was a nice trade.

I did say I made a mistake here, but that isn’t really true. I made a reasonable bet that didn’t work out. I’m a card counter as well, and when I double on an 11 against a 5 with a face card rich deck, and lose, I didn’t make a mistake.

The same is true here. The appearance was a company that would be inflecting up because their investments in selling/marketing was effective, and without a gross capital structure or balance sheet problems. New information was revealed, and it appears that was wrong. It’s like drawing a 2 on your 11. Faced with a similar situation Id probably do the same thing. My mistake if anything was probably not feeling out DD on the competitive landscape.

Also turned out we also have a mutual interest in HASH. I did talk to Jeff Swainson, and wasn’t super happy with his explanation on inventory levels which is my biggest red flag, but I own some anyway. If I bought that situation 100 times I’d make money more often than not. The same is true of GSI.

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