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I guess we all have our own perspectives and most of us (all of you mainly...ha ha) are wrong. A dividend would be about the stupidest thing ever for a small growing company. Their small sharebuyback/retirement does make some sense since it helps support the stock AND it makes each of our shares worth more. What is gold with a growing company is shares.
If I thought for even 1 second that what you just said was true, I would dump all my shares right now regardless of price. It would not be an investable company.
Every company has 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and very long term plans. The basis of which is revenue and earnings and cash and debt. This is how they staff, how they spend capex dollars, how they budget, etc.
2016 is the perfect example of why guidance was/is needed. Q1 was spectacular beyond belief great. Q2 was blah/flat. Q3 was blah/flat. IF in January 2016 the company had said "we expect full year 2016 revenue and earnings to be up 20 - 25% verses 2015" then no one would have over rejoiced after Q1 and no one would have panic'd after Q2 and Q3. We would all know about what is coming for Q4. It basically keeps investors/shareholders informed and expectations in check and reasonable/in-line with the company.
The main reason annual forward guidance IS a must for VirTra is because their quarters are lumpy. If they had a smooth steady forever ramp then forward guidance would not be necessary.
I just bought another 6k shares. It would appear the supply at 2.63 is endless. Who t Fridge is selling?
They need to do 2 things right now. Release prelim Q4 numbers and issue revenue/earnings guidance for 2017. One nice clean PR with this info and all would be well.
There. You're welcome. Bought 600 at the buzzer for the 2.64 close. Sleep well.
My guess is that it is simply one person with a sizeable position who continues to unload shares for whatever reason....and it isn't me.
I had stopped buying for several weeks now and that hasn't helped either. If you want to feel better, enter a market buy order for a few shares 45seconds before the close and you can sleep on a green day at 2.64.
At least they always do read the emails and reply. I also exchanged an email or two with Larry. I continue to harp on the need to provide forward guidance and to point out ways they can improve shareholder value/confidence without costing the company any money.
They need to provide forward guidance.
They need to publish their investor presentation schedule for 2017.
They need to have new BOD guy and other execs buy shares.
They need to announce prelim Q4 results in mid-January.
Lots of ways to demonstrate they care about shareholders.
While EV is about 20mil right now, their balance sheet will improve a little bit during Q3 which just ended and improve a lot in Q4 which just started.
Q3 will be better due to the deferred RB4 revenue.
Q4 always builds cash because that is essentially when Mad Catz gets paid for the Fall/Xmas season.
It's really terrible that some are selling at this level. All they need is a couple months more patience, maybe less.
pgh, You answered your own question. Yes, YOU would be happy with $30 right now, but guess what.....the really great news is that the CEO of CNAT along with his entire team and BOD believe the company will be worth much much more than that relatively soon.
It is obvious that the only reason Novartis didn't buy them outright is because Conatus wouldn't let them! That is spectacular news for shareholders as it clearly tells us exactly where this is headed. It is a screaming long term buy. And long term isn't a decade or 5 years or even 3. The stock will head upward soon and keep going for a long time.
Happy New Year. My target is $24 one year from today. Just a pure guess.
The CNAT market cap at the current stock price remains a joke for several reasons:
First, Almost all the risk is now gone from the stock due to Novartis.
Second, The drug results Conatus has published to date are obviously encouraging to anyone who can read, however, can you imagine the depth to which Novartis dug into things before writing a $50mil check and pledging another $800mil to $1bil?
Third, the market cap TODAY is even less than it was a couple years ago before the results, before Novartis, before about anything.
Fourth, Think about some of the upcoming catalysts and PRs we are likely to see with respect to milestones and trigger payments.
This will not stay in the $5 price range for very long. I will venture this gets to about $8 by the end of next week, $20 by late Summer.
It (slow no volume walkdown) has now gotten to the point of being interesting.
If it is a walkdown, how many shares are they willing to give up?
Where might the company step in and buy?
If it is simply a single person selling, how low are they willing to give away their shares?
I didn't think I'd be adding shares but may have to as the valuation is drifting from good buy to great buy to unbelievably great buy. EV is now about $35million. FY2017 revenue should be in the $22mil range with EPS of 20cents or more. Balance sheet should add another $4mil in cash. If company was zero growth with poor forward prospects then current price makes sense. But with a proven 20% grower, no sense at all.
Happy New Year All....even Twisty!
high school BB games, gymnastics meets, right now shopping for another apartment building in Madison, WI - offers due Dec 28, snowshoeing, chainsawing, usually slip in a warm weather vacation for a week or two, ice fish a bit, bow hunting for deer still open til Jan 7th, visit inlaws/outlaws in WI/MN.....pretty much normal stuff
winter is also the time I spend much more time with stocks and the markets....my 7yr old dog also keeps me going and takes up a ton of time
Mosquitos don't do so good between September and April. They're frozen solid. I used to do a ton of ice fishing and likely will again one day. Nothing like watching the Vexilar FL8 as a walleye comes up to the jigging rapala.
If you can believe it, right now we have a nice base of about 12 inches of snow on the ground but at this moment it is drizzling rain.
Sort of nice to think that 1 week from now VirTra will have already started FY2017. Should be a fun ride...UP!
If any of you regulars here get bored this weekend after eating Christmas dinner, take a serious look at CNAT. They are a tiny biotech developing a drug to help with liver disease. First look at their basic stats and realize the total number of outstanding shares is 26million, no debt, and now an even bigger pile of cash. Extremely low share count for a biotech.
If you are in to the details listen to some of the recent conf calls and presentations on the website. To date, the results are more than promising and Phase 2b and some 3s should start in Q2 and Q4 2017.
Then read the Novartis news from earlier this week and then start to do the math on those numbers and how they relate to 26million shares.
Then start scratching your head and come to the conclusion this thing could easily go up 5 to 10X within 12 months.....and still be too cheap.
I still love my VTSI and would never sell a share in order to buy something else, but some of you may be looking for ideas for the next year or two. Hopeful has some good posts on it on Investor Village. I know who Hopeful is and he is a smart and savvy man, a semi-retired accounting professor and author.
Right now the market is valuing the company at less than zero! You can literally buy the company for nothing right now at $4. They have $3 per share in cash IN HAND. They have near term commitments from Novartis of approx. $100mil for 1/2 Ph2 and Ph3. They have future commits of up to $650mil.
Start dividing those $ numbers by 26mil shares. Buy of the decade!
Our wives sound alike except mine likes to sleep in. I'm the early bird.
Merry Christmas!
No problem at all. I really do like most everyone here and what they post, even Twister!
In your reply Bill you actually stated my position perfectly. I really do not care about the stuff between the top and bottom lines. And this is true with all my stocks.
I would care about those things IF I believed any of it. Not being the cook there is no way to really confirm all the ingredients in the soup. Even most company employees have no way of confirming all the accounting stuff. In any company, no matter how large, there are only 2 or 3 people that know all the numbers that matter.
Just my opinions and I admit I am often wrong.
With all due respect, you guys are insane. But I say that with love in my voice.
As an outside shareholder, joe main street, which is what I am, there are only several things I care about or have the capability of grasping.
1. The top line which is revenue.
2. The bottom line which is net income aka EPS.
3. The balance sheet.
4. How each of the above have been changing from year to year.
5. PS, PE, EV/EBITDA relative to general market.
6. Forward prospects - as in, is there a future for the product.
I have worked at enough companies to know what can all happen between the top line and the bottom line as have many of you.
Morningstar - Did you ladies actually read it? If you did, then you yourself are one more person than actually read it at Morningstar. It is a computer generated piece of garbage. It even says that point blank in the upper left paragraph on page 1. It says NO ONE at Morningstar had a role in the report.
Then look at the numbers they used. Several (with respect to quarterly earnings) are INCORRECT. Doesn't really matter though since these sorts of things are garbagio.
It IS crystal clear. Clear from VirTra's filings and clear from Modern Round's filings.
Twister, You again failed to provide even one example. Modern Round is a tiny and insignificant part of VirTra's business. They only have one site and VirTra stated that they supplied the equipment at a price slightly above breakeven. What more info could you possibly want on $1.5mil of business out of $30mil over the last couple years. The entire Modern Round relationship is detailed in crystal clear terms in the publically available agreement.
All you do is try to cast doubt by elevating tiny issues to the status of Mt. Everest.
Just sell your shares and move on.
Twister,
I am truly curious as to what you are talking about when you say "breaking down their revenue and expense numbers in a meaningful way."
All their numbers are in their quarterly filings easy to find and easy to read and understand. They are very transparent. I mean it is not like they have four different product lines in four different industries. They have ONE product line and all revenue comes from it. Many of their contracts are even in the public domain. There is far more visibility and credibility with VirTra's revenue and earnings stream than with most fully public SEC reporting companies. Again, maybe if you can provide me with a specific example I would understand your point.
With respect to forward guidance, I tend to agree with you. That said, they have stated point blank that they will be a 20%+ grower going forward as they have been over the last 8+ years.
Merry Christmas!
With this sort of thing (good publicity for good reasons), I always wonder how it is even possible that 10 investors throughout the entire state of AZ didn't see the report, become curious enough to find/research the VTSI ticker, and then buy 5000 shares each.
Are people that lazy?
Is the age of stock picking dead?
Does no one watch or read real news?
Upon a quick research look does VTSI look terrible?
Probably half the stocks I buy I find through some sort of media mention, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
I guess one of the mysteries of the world I will take to my grave.
Great report and worth watching (several times)for two reasons.
1. VirTra content is excellent and I love the NAACP endorsement near the end.
2. The brunette newscaster is spectacular. Makes me want to relocate just to watch her.
Not sure I have the above two items in the correct order.
Anyone selling now or at this sort of price is stupid. They were just given $50mil in cash which is $2 per share. We now know for a fact there will be no dilution EVER. Novartis just agreed to also fully fund all phase 3 work. AND we know CNAT will get an extremely healthy royalty and then some.
This is a far better buy now at $4.50 than it was a couple hours ago at $1.90. It is easy to see this getting to $50+ in about 3 years. It just became a long term growth stock!
Revenue of $25million and EPS of +3cents.
Very true! I need to just stop whining and follow my own advice....patience.
Some moron would still rather sell at 2.81 than 3.01. What a dunce.
"Crown Royal" - No doubt we would get along very well! The post you disavowed wasn't all that bad. I am hoping they are doing some rah rah activities but behind the scenes from us.
Ok, I'll play....
Looks like Taser is going to have a fight on their hands in their efforts to buy VirTra. AOBC might now want VirTra to be the shining star in their Law Enforcement division beneath the AOBC umbrella. AOBC recently increased their credit lines to take advantage of acquisition opportunities. Another rumor is AOBC's effort to establish an Entertainment division headed by the current Modern Round.
Sounds to me like you are the one who just did the speculating! Well done and sort of an original clever way of going about it.
I actually own a few Smith&Wesson shares (and their products)and even I (one who loves speculation) didn't see anything related to VirTra in their company name change. But hey, I am often not too smart about that sort of thing.
Good topic.
No doubt that is true. In my opinion the last 2 quarters really hurt the stock's short term prospects with the low revenue and breakeven performance.
If one accepts the "lumpy" quarter premise then the last 2 quarters don't mean much because you know Q4 is likely to be really good.
The good thing is that the trailing EPS is still about 16 or 17 cents so trailing PE is well below 20 and EV/EBITDA is still way too low. So the fundamentals do support the current price quite nicely. Yes, the PS is a bit rich relative to overall market but is still low relative to their industry and relative to their growth rate. So again, current valuation well supported. The full year 2016 numbers will also be very good verses 2015 since through 3 quarters of 2016 VirTra has already almost matched full year 2015. So they appear on track for yet another +20% growth year.
Problem is simply no consistent buy-side volume and avg daily volume remains far too low. This hurts because as soon as a decent bid appears someone hits it since they aren't sure when they will again get the chance. Lets hope the 2017 investor presentations and SEC reporting status and Q4 report all change this to where it trades 100,000 shares per day. Until then, probably best to ignore it.
Now the GD fool is chasing the bid. How stupid can one get?
Hi Bill, The 22k shares are still there right now at 2.95. I live on planet Earth. Trump isn't prez yet, not til Jan 20, 2017. Wall will be built, he (and you and I) are smarter than some (but not all) of the generals, tax returns-no one cares since they are meaningless.
I hope VirTra preannounces their Q4 numbers in mid-January though I doubt they will.
Bill, Not everyone thinks like you. Not sure why you mention $300. The ask is for about 22,500 shares at 2.95 so that is $66,000 with most of it likely a long term cap gain so could make a nice divet in someones tax loss.
The market and businesses LOVE the Pres-elect. Look at the market reaction since the election. We need to get rid of unnecessary regulation, shrink the size of government, and basically just take the handcuffs off of businesses. Sort of looks to me like some of this may happen.
There also have not been any contradictions from our next Pres. He has been remarkably consistent on all the big issues. You need to stop watching ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/CNBC/FOX and all major media. All are incorrectly biased. The election just proved it. You would do far better to make me your single source of information as I told you many months ago Trump would win. Ha Ha.
Over the years I have come to the conclusion that December is often a really great time to selectively buy certain stocks, especially when the year went mostly in a single direction - either up or down.
2016 was a generally pretty good year for stocks and a decent year for VTSI. So, maybe the seller is selling some in order to offset losses elsewhere? Usually we all tend to think about weakness in a stock being due to tax loss selling but sometimes it doesn't work in the obvious fashion even though the same technical are in play.
It would be more clear if the seller would simply post his/her reason on this message board.
Bigger question for me is why no one has stepped up and bought those shares. Sort of a rare opportunity to nab .15% of the company without moving the stock!
Yea I see that. That means someone (probably someone on this message board?) who watches the daily bid/ask closely jumped in yesterday and sold about 25k shares to fill that bid.
A bit of advice for the person trying to unload the 23k shares at 2.95: Simply RAISE your ask to maybe 3.20 and then put an ALL OR NONE requirement on the sale. This is usually what I do in a case like this where a stock is thinly traded and it is difficult to accumulate a large position. Works everytime though sometimes takes a few days.
Yes Bill, some days I am nuts. Your idea of a guy like Patreus (spelling?) on the BOD is a fantastic idea as long as he can help the company and I would guess he could if for no other reason than his name and reputation.
Part of my frustration is that I really thought Ferris and BOD had several big buyers lined up to take positions after the uplist. Can't imagine they did the RS and uplist without those head nods in place.
Then I see someone unloading 30k shares at about 3 and it really ticks me off. Mainly because I didn't have cash at the ready.
My whole problem right now is I have more time to look at the computer now that there is snow/cold and many of my "hobbies" are on hold for a month or three.
Good to see those shares gone. Congrats to the buyer. Condolences to the seller.
At the close there were only about 2665 for sale at the 2.90 ask so I guess that is progress.
It is hard to believe that none of us here and no one "out there" are willing to buy those 22000 shares for sale at 2.95. That is a nice block of shares and sort of rare for this stock.
I'm glad you posted it, I wouldn't have stumbled across it for a few weeks. That article might explain the trading strength the last few days.
I really do love this company and stock and am puzzled why so few are willing to buy shares and hold for a year or two. Sure, it is not a sure thing but all data available to date suggests their drug is the real deal.