Andrea Electronics (ANDR)

[illegal_alias]

Because he can get it. Seriously, the Andrea family has controlled the company for years. Their major mistake was selling off the the military communications division in the 1990s. Dumb mistake when a lot of smaller defense contractors bought into the "peace dividend" scenario after the cold war. The more sophisticated players (Lockheed, Honeywell, McD, Boeing, L3, etc) realized that the action was going to be in C3I applications going into the post-cold war era and the enemy was going to be unconventional, so a high premium was going to be on surveillance and communications. So, the big boys bought out the smaller competition. A few big players like Harris Corp did make a successful conversion to focus on more consumer products and diversify and balanced their business portfolios.

In an online interview, Doug Andrea talks about "restructuring" the company since he has come on board. Since the company barely puts out any PRs, it's hard to tell if they are making any headway on that effort. Looking at the 10K's and 10Q's, it doesn't appear to be doing it. Barely keeping their noses above water.

ANDR has struggled all of these years trying to find a niche in a rapidly evolving consumer products only landscape. Their technology is good (I have some experience in tech commercialization and patents), but presently not a large enough customer base. Since their technology in DSP is software-based, it would appear to me that it could be put into FPGA's for a variety of audio products. Not sure of that the current minimum size is for FPGAs and if that is a hindrance.