Reader Picks

Well, it’s been four days of blogging now, and I must say this is more exciting and rewarding then I could have imagined. I’m now a regular contributor at Seeking Alpha (as referenced by that neat little seal over to your right), and have gotten some great encouragement and publicity from some of my favorite sites (Kirk Report, Seeking Alpha, and World Beta). Overall, this has been more fun and involving then I could have imagined.

Another great perk has been the quality of a couple picks readers have sent over. I’m in the very initial phases of doing work on these, but wanted to share the names.

MCZ (thanks to Steven Lobo): MCZ is a name I looked at 3+ years ago, when I was interesting in the gaming space. They make popular 3^rd party peripherals for the gaming market. Market cap is $40M. Sales pretty flat to down slightly the last 3 years. Insider recently purchased $40k in shares after the stock more than doubled in a 5 month period, which I like.

Interesting story here appears to be one of cutting out the unprofitable products, and focusing on higher margin products going forward. Revenues in Q4 were down significantly, but profitability was up substantially, which is exactly what I’d want to see in a case like this. Q4 profits were $.07, putting this at a P/E of about 10 based on that quarter alone. That said, Q4 is seasonally strong in this biz, so I need to understand likely performance in other quarters, as well as where they are in their transformation of their product line. Worth a look though.

TISA (thanks to ilan): Israeli software company in document management space. $20M in cash, making EV on this about $10M. Revenue growth of about 15% organically. Subtract out the cash, and its trading at a 10 P/E. Seems interesting and cheap, but I don’t understand the space too well, and think I’d need to do a good deal of work to get comfortable with it. Acquisition of another company (or acquisition of them by larger players, who have been actively buying out players here) could be a catalyst. Anyhow, will also add this to my list to look at.

If you have any interesting ideas, please do send them my way (especially if they are as good, at first glance, as these two). E-mail link is on the right of the page.