Count... I tend to agree with most of your post, but tend to disagree in this respect and then I will qualify my statement. I find it troubling that an upgrade was made 2 weeks ago and now a downgrade in such a short time. Yourself and a few others, I think, have stated that you feel the downgrade was made primariily because of a jump in share price ($27.61 to $33.33) that has likely given the analyst the impetus to re-evaluate the rating since the projection of $39 was for the entire year. That's a $5.72 increase or 20.7% which is not even close to a 50% increase as stated. I took my figures from January 20 to the close yesterday.
If an abrupt increase or decrease in share price results in an upgrade or a downgrade, then you're esentially saying Carpenter will come out with another upgrade in a week perchance the stock again falls to $27. I don't believe that at all. Upgrading and downgrading in a few weeks could go on forever the way idcc jumps back and forth.
I don't think Carpenter or any other analyst would attempt to micro manage a stock and if it has to do with price alone, then I would call it micro managing. If we dropped $2 tomorrow, then the increase would be only 13% which isn't unlikely at all. What would he do? Make all haste in cancelling the downgrade.
I would rather believe TC has heard or knows something that tends to make him believe that idcc may not sign nokia until the end of this or next year or perhaps he thinks nokia will go to the end and take it to Deleware. Just pure speculation and only an example, but I believe Carpenter has a more valid reason than a price swing.
"Tom provides his thorough professional research on IDCC to Jim for this board as a courtesy." With this statement I couldn't agree more and that is why I give Tom Carpenter more credit as I believe he has more of a valid reason for the downgrade than a mere 20% price swing. We will see when he issues the downgrade, I hope.
By the way, I'm just disagreeing with you on that minor point. I feel yours was an excellent post and I agree that we should value our analyst, however, I believe we need to evaluate his statements. I do believe he has been most helpful to us through JimLur and I hope he continues to follow idcc. I have been using his figures closely for my estimates because I feel he has a good handle on idcc's progress. .. mo... nic
Btw Count, keep that thinking cap on old fellow as I'm beginning to advance in age myself and won't be able to hold you up forever. Ah!! you know I'm just kidding. You wouldn't want the whole board to agree with you all 100% anyway. Would make you hard to get along with the other half. Take care... nic
AI
