O.K. sports fans, you have been BORED, I mean BORED with some of my latest stock picks? I mean things like NetFlix or Michael's? How about a LITTLE fast-growing tech stocks. That is definitely a sexier pick! Riskier too but if you hold your losses to 8% and get a little lucky, the momentum will carry you. Anyhow, I don't own any shares of SupportSoft but it made out list today. Let's look at the company!
SupportSoft (SPRT), according to money.cnn.com, "...is a provider of e-business infrastructure software that automates and personalizes user support over the internet." I always have a hard time figuring out what some of these high-tech stocks ACTUALLY do when reading these descriptions. You too? Anyhow, SPRT is trading at $8.94 as I write, up $.71 or 8.63%.
Their last quarter earnings report was reported on July 14, 2003, per the NYTimes on the Web. Revenues for the second quarter of 2003 were $12.6 million a 33% increase from $9.5 million last year and a 5% increase from $12.0 million the prior quarter. This gives us both the assurance of continued growth sequentially as well as year-over-year. Net income was $2.0 million or $.06/share compared with a net loss of $1.8 million or $(.06) per share last year, and up from $.04/share the prior quarter.
Morningstar.com shows a rapid growth in this company with $0 in revenue in 1998, $3.2 million in 1999, $18.7 million in 2000, $30.4 million in 2001, $41 million in 2002, and at the current rate the company should hit $50 million in revenue in 2003.
Free cash flow has recently turned positive as well with $(18) million reported in 2000, $(26) million in 2001, $4 million in 2002 and $4 million in the trailing twelve months.
The company is still fairly relatively flush with cash with $32.0 million in cash on hand more than enough to pay off the current liabilities of $21.0 million and long-term liabilities of $1.9 million combined. In addition, they have $14.5 million in other current assets.
The market cap is not as small as I suspected with $282.5 million reported on Yahoo.com. There are 34.3 million shares outstanding with 21.5 million of them that float (available for public purchase I guess you could say...with the rest closely held). No dividend is paid. The stock sells at a relatively steep p/e of 64.80 but this REALLY isn't that high when you consider that the company JUST turned profitable and this should be dropping fast. The price/sales is also a little expensive at 6.02...but again, the company is small and growing QUICKLY.
There are 1.95 million shares out short representing 9.1% of the float as of 8/8/03. This represents 2.94 days of trading volume.
I like this company and if you have this stock as one of a number of investments, you may do quite well. Unfortunately with a $.75 change in price you may hit an 8% loss which is where I would sell...making these small price issues (under $10) very volatile and sometimes NOT lasting long in my portfolio. I certainly don't own any shares but would consider buying as well...as you know the familiar song...if I had the available cash!
Regards again.
Bob