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This had better work out. My own opinion is that they really screwed this up badly. Judging by todays reaction so far, the market sees it as a crappy, desperate move to stay on the NASDAQ.
Stocks that do a reverse split usually end up selling for the same price they did before the split. However, it's usually due to the fact that companies doing a reverse split are going down the tubes anyways. That's not the case here with ABTL, but the market doesn't know that.
We'll see what happens, but I think Coats and the BOD just killed ABTL. I really hope I'm wrong.
Incidentally, when did shareholders vote to do this split?
stockdoc
Not to be contrary, but it did trade that 100K block this morning. You're right though, just about all the trades look like they're being done by kids learning how to buy and sell stock. No one makes or loses anything holding 100 shares. It's a real waste of time and money doing that.
The big block of 116K shares finally got sold out, then, just to make things bad again, someone put up about 30K shares to be sold at .80. That kind of messed things up.
Just to sum it up, the bids just aren't there. No one's interested, and Coats' dog and pony shows are a flop. The company keeps on firing blanks. Nothing of any substance.
I asked my broker about the stock, and he was impressed with the insider buys until he looked at the insider volume. Need I say more about that?
I will say that he's never said anything bad about the stock. Actually, he was kind of impressed with all their progress.
stockdoc
He/she finally sold those 116,529 shares, but had to lower the price to .75. Maybe we can get some momentum on the upside for a change. Level II is showing an asked price of .79.
I'm happy we're through with that roadblock.
stockdoc
Autotrader says they're going to use the money to repay debts, so ABTL looks like a no-go. They crappy thing about this is that we all can guess that the IPO will go over well, and their stock will make money for them and the shareholders. However, Autotrader is in debt, they have to float an IPO or they could be in default.
ABTL has cash, and is cash flow positive, and their stock's stumbling around like it's brain dead. Where's the justice in all this? Sounds like ABTL is in a lot better shape than Autotrader.
stockdoc
That brings up the question of what Autotrader intends doing with the money they get from the IPO. Maybe they intend using part of it for consolidation, and that could mean an attempt to buy ABTL.
Let's hope.
stockdoc
I've seen companys that have declared bankruptcy do better than ABTL. ABTL keeps the news coming, and all they do is sit there or go down. Something's totally screwed up with the market on this stock. It should be much higher with strong volume. This whole thing just isn't normal or anything close to it.
We'll eventually find out what's holding it back and it'll all make sense.
stockdoc
Monday at about 3:30, the order to sell those 116K shares at .78 was entered again. We still can't get past that roadblock. Until there's enough volume and bids to wipe those out, we're stuck below .78.
stockdoc
Sell order for 116K cancelled. Whoever had them up for sale probably just got po'ed and decided to wait until stock price goes up.
stockdoc
Yepp, a real crock of crap. We still have a load of stock (116K shares) at .78 to get past. Of course, that assumes that anyone's willing to come up with a bid of more than .78 after those are gone.
I went back and listened to Coats again. He can't figure it out either. The company does consistently bettter with an outlook of a good year, and the stock goes down. Coats is po'ed, so what's going on? He doesn't know.
stockdoc
I don't recall the exact date that they came out with the announcement to buy back stock. It's in the ABTL news items.
Coats said that they were buying stock as part of the second buy-back during one of those conferences. I just tried looking for the transcript, and can't find it. The sites called Retail Stock Investor and I can't locate ABTL in the list of presenters. (can't even find the archives) A really crappy website right from the beginning, and still is.
From all that I can recall, I'm sticking with the recollection that the 2.1 million share sale happened all in one piece, and was a single transaction, not broken up into pieces. That's the way Ihub trades reported it, and it happened after ABTL finished buying it's first tranche and before they announced the second buy-back. The importance relating to this is whether or not a single institution/company bought it all at once to possibly do a takeover or not. If ABTL bought a good sized portion of that 2.1 million, then we start all over again and wait another company to show some interest in buying ABTL.
stockdoc
The completion of the first buy-back occured prior to the 2.1 million share trade (June 5th).
stockdoc
P.S. there's still 117,501 shares at .78 still left over that haven't sold yet. Until those are sold, sellers are going to keep on putting their shares up for .7799, etc. We just don't have the volume and bidding we need to get past those selling at .78
stockdoc
Did you ever hear that old saying " a watched pot never boils". Well, same thing here with this stock "a watched stock never goes up". How much help is this, probably none whatsoever.
Coats probably played all his cards, he's made it public that the company will probably be sold, and that's about all that can be said. I'm still trying to figure out who bought 4.6% of the stock in ABTL. I was hoping Geronimo would find out, he's good at that from what I've seen of his previous posts.
stockdoc
Spartak, sorry for the scare. Look at this way; there's a temporary roadblock. It's still there today (133,601 shares at .78, Level II.)
When some news comes out, that'll be wiped out. Stick with it and don't worry about the small stuff, it's just a damned nuisance.
The big news will be when these guys sell out or some company comes up with a hostile takeover bid.
stockdoc
Spartak, we're already in the second phase of the buy-back. ABTL's locked into a bunch of restrictions on how much they can buy back at any time and how much they can pay. They also have restrictions on the hours of the open market they can trade. That 133K shares is a problem, but not a big problem as far as the buy-back is concerned. What it does do is to prompt retail sellers who want to sell their ABTL shares to come in with ask-prices of .7799, .7798, etc. That puts a lid on the price for the day for all intents and purposes.
Incidentally, how did ABTL manage to buy back all those shares at an average of .76 when they had already bought back a ton of shares at a lot higher price? I have to go back and check the figures, but I know it doesn't average out correctly.
Something isn't right about this whole thing.
stockdoc
We still have 139,000 of those shares at .78 left over that haven't traded. We probably won't get past them judging from the trade volume.
Unless something astounding comes from ABTL, today's another lost day and we'll be stuck at .78 or less.
stockdoc
That "asked" that I'm talking about started out several days ago....about 151,000 shares at .78. A few of them traded, and the balance is still there. There just aren't enough bids at .78 or more to clean them out and move upwards to a higher asked price. Of course, the bids aren't exactly helping out either.
stockdoc
It looks like we won't get past .78 today. There's a big block of 142,000 going for .78, and with the volume that we have, that's blocking just about all the other ask prices.
If we only knew what was happening behind the scenes.... Buyout? We'll know soon enough if a PR comes out asking shareholders to vote for someone new to be elected to the BOD. Hostile takeover?
As far as that reverse split, I really hope that's been priced in. The problem, is that a lot of stock holders don't bother keeping up with the news, and it might come as a big surprise. ABTL went through delisting before and came out of it with no problems. Coats is jumping the gun, and it's probably going to cost him big time. Of course, what does he care. He'll probably just move again and collect another $200,000. (Sorry, I just can't let go of that)
stockdoc
Regarding those several million shares that traded last week (?), that's one thing we're going to have to watch out for. The reason I say that is because it amounts to about 4.6% of the outstanding shares, and indicates that there's something going on. That "something" is very likely going to be a big change in ABTL, typically, a buyout or merger. Those shares didn't change hands like that without a reason.
stockdoc
Once again, unfortunately, ABTL has chosen to do something that I can't see much benefit to. They've chosen to provide content to the TV channels web sites, not the actual broadcasts. Who bothers going to a TV channels web site? Maybe I'll check for the weather or sports news, but that's about it. I usually stay away from the channels website because the local news shows are a bunch of crap and are loaded with ads all over the screen. That's Scripps for you, and that's ABTL's answer to publicity. The only thing I can say that would have been worse is going to AM radio stations.
stockdoc
ABTL's still trying. Let's see what they mean by "teaming up" with Scripps. I assume that ABTL will have some TV time, but I don't know what this whole thing means beyond that.
The one thing that I do know for sure; Other than auto dealers, I've never met anyone who knew the name "Autobytel".
stockdoc
Hey Spartak, I watched ABTL close on the Level II, and my question is, "where did that last bid and ask come from? The asked price was only .78, and someone came in with a higher bid than what was asked. Very strange....if that would happen every day, we wouldn't have anything to worry about. Of course, we would be well over a dollar anyways.
stockdoc
Everybody, think of these stock buy-backs as a dividend. The profit per outstanding share will be divided equally amongst the remaining shares that are left.
stockdoc
You are correct. They said they bought back about 660,000 shares or so. However, they've now used up all that first million and a half.
Figuring out (approximately, since we don't know how many shares ABTL will buy-back and at what price) the total number of shares ABTL will take out of circulation, it looks like they'll retire about 4.5 million shares. That's about 10% of the outstanding shares. That ain't bad.
stockdoc
Did you ever get the feeling that a) either no one cares, or b) that no one reads the latest news items?
Despite Coats and his BOD taking too much money for themselves, this latest buy-back has to looked at as a positive step towards getting the price of the stock back up over a dollar.
I see that Edmunds.com is getting some TV time. Another possible buyer of ABTL?
stockdoc
On the short term, I'm glad to see them buying more of their own stock. I'm really getting the feeling that they intend selling the company and they would rather get the sale-premium themselves rather than give it to the shareholders.
Better doing this than making any additional acquisitions.
stockdoc
I have an extensive record of the institutional ABTL holdings, and they change all months of the year. I suspect that institutions make changes any time of the year depending on circumstances, but hold a general review twice a year as you stated.
I agree, if Coats can crank the price of the stock above a dollar prior to the cut-off date for NASDAQ delisting, he may decide to just hold onto the company. What does concern me is that if he does decide to hold onto the company is that he may attempt to do some more consolidation by purchasing more wholesale providers with the cash they have on hand. That may be good long term, but it usually causes a drop in the stock price.
stockdoc
Autobytel management covered themselves back some time ago by putting a 5% clause in their by-laws. No one could hold 5% or more of their stock without approval of their BOD as I recall it. Sneaky group, aren't they? That happened when ABTL was the target of a hostile takeover.
I think something big is going on, I just can't figure out what it is. Coats has basically put the company up for sale without going through an M&A company, this big sale of stock today, and last nights dump of 41K shares. If we only knew what was going on, a lot of this stuff would make sense. I'm just not clever enough to figure out what's happening. Maybe I should just go for the obvious and conclude that ABTL's being considered for an acquisition.
stockdoc
Since the 2 million share trade amounts to about 4.6% of the outstanding shares, the stock is almost guaranteed to be from an institution. I checked several times today, and can't find any institutional ownership changes. Maybe one will show up later due to a time-lag in reporting.
What's really amazing is that the trade took place without disrupting the price more than a couple of cents.
stockdoc
No, it wasn't Autobytel buying stock. First of all it was listed as a sell, not a buy. It amounted to approximately 4.6% of the total outstanding shares. That's typically an institutionally sized holding. Second, Autobytel already bought over 600K shares, and there wasn't enough cash approved to buy the 2,119,592 shares that traded.
stockdoc
It was an outright sale. Ihub trade showed that information.
stockdoc
That's an awful lot of shares to try to do something like that. Also, it's after-hours and may not even be noticed after the market opens the next day.
stockdoc
Whoever sold that stock took about $3,300 less than market value. Let's see what happens tomorrow. Did they know something the rest of don't, or were they just plain stupid?
stockdoc
The point in writing to him is to let him know that we aren't happy with the way he's spending our money. Maybe if enough of us write, he'll stop blowing the company's money and increase the bottom line profits. That goes for the money he's throwing away for the BOD as well.
Just take a look at the profits versus the money he's taken over the last couple of years. That's money that could have taken us to break-even or maybe even shown a profit instead of a loss.
ABTL management is strictly out to take care of themselves first an foremost. The shareholder gets whatever scraps are left over, and guess what's going to happen if they sell the company. Coats and Co. will walk away with a very big chunk of whatever they get, not the shareholder.
stockdoc
Spartak, did you try writing to Coats? Maybe he'll answer at least one of our e-mails. You know what you'll get if you don't write...nothing. Might as well give it a try and see if he'll answer.
stockdoc
Watch for a big change in institutional holdings, both buy and sell. We may see a big sell-off if an instition gets po'ed with the whole situation and decides to dump it. We may also see a big buy if an institution decides to try to get on the BOD and clean ABTL's house. Could go either way, but as Coats said, he's looking for a buy-out by a larger company.
stockdoc
Error correction: It's Mark Ross who's selling the stock within days of purchasing it, not Mark Kaplan as I previously stated.
stockdoc
You get to vote on some of these issues June 21. That's when the next board meeting is, and you can vote on the reverse split (which I personally think is a horrible mistake), and a few other issues put before the shareholder.
As far as Coats is concerned, he's pulling in a million a year while the shareholder is only getting a little of the left-overs. I'm not putting in anymore cash just to support Coats life style.
What I'm honestly expecting fairly soon based on similar situations that I've seen before, is one of the big shareholders to step in and try to get a few seats on the BOD. It's obvious that this company needs one heck of a big shake-up to get this company straightened out. No more cash-cow for the execs.
Whether or not any of the employees buys shares on a regular basis remains to be seen. So far, it's totally pathetic and an insult to our intelligence.
stockdoc
Send your comments to: jeffc@autobyel.com
Unless you're willing to sit back and take this kind of abuse, let Coats know that sucking the company dry while the shareholders are losing all their investment is unacceptable.
stockdoc