Veritone Inc (VERI)

[GBR]

Veritone has been unduly punished by the new leadership at Acacia research for quite some time now. They started unloading their shares at around 10 and continued with periodic sells all the way down to below 5. This was at the direction of Clifford Press. He reasons that they had too much exposure to Veritone, but the manner in which Acacia has sold the shares was derelict in my opinion. It was Acacia itself largely responsible for pushing the stock down lower at each subsequent sale. Had they been more strategic, patient, methodical, they would not have had to realize such steep losses on their sales. IMO, the right thing to do would have been for Acacia to spin the Veritone shares off to its shareholders, and let the shareholders make the decision to sell or hold. Their was nothing shareholder friendly or prudent about their actions, and I believe it was aggressively sold out of spite for the previous Acacia management. There simply is nothing intelligent about their actions with respect to Veritone. That's my Acacia rant.
Now, that being said, it is also my opinion that the Acacia pile-driving sell-fest created a unique opportunity to invest in Veritone at an artificially low price. Veritone has a revenue challenge I know, but at the current revenue run rate, Veritone is priced quite a bit lower than other small cap AI stocks on a price/sales or a EV/sales basis. I think the stock was spring-loaded at 5 and below. And now today we have JMP securities initiating coverage which appears to have started today's excitement. I am not a technical analysis type person but it seems to me that the stock can easily creep back up to 10, the level at which Acacia started selling. Beyond that I will be hoping for more encouraging news on revenue ramp-up.