Bill and Steve
Noise ratio?
You suggest that there has been a rush to sell by MapInfo insiders? This is
simply not so. I see a fairly well run "small" company with some of its
officers exercising their options knowing that they may have more yet to
come.
At best all I can see in the last 30 days are insider trades amounting to
only 4000 shares. As for Gersuk's public disclosure of 78,000 shares via a
144 Form (notice of shares), he may or may not actually sell them in the
next 90 days. It does not mean these shares have traded or that they must.
Its just public notification that these shares are now to be included in the
common stock "pool".
Also the $2.5 million Steve inaccurately identifies with the 78,000 share
block is at this moment a phantom transaction at over $32 a share. A very
savvy trader might look at that as a signal the real value of the stock is
not $20 or even $15 but likely it could be worth as much as $32 sometime in
the next 90 days.
As to previous insider sales, yep, have no doubt that when the stock went
over $40 and its PE soared far outside normal, its time to reduce risk. I
and plenty of others got out as well. MapInfo didn't create the over
valuation - the market did. Simple smarts - nothing sinister in my mind.
Noise like this might be read as an attack on MapInfo's market value through
suggestion that MapInfo is being run by crooks who simply run up the value,
sell and dash (worse yet, they don't respond to "wish-lists"). Of course
few check details that seem to be well founded in an analyst's reputation.
But heaps of money can be made by going short in a falling market?
Most importantly MapInfo has recently signaled several times that
expectations for this quarter above $0.19 earnings per share may be
optimistic but that too was missed. Actually $0.19 is the MapInfo's
projection not to be confused with market analysits who have missed
MapInfo's over performances quarter by quarter. Why the conservative note?
Maybe MapInfo or its institutional investors also face macro-economic
factors like currency issues, a soft business cycle here and overseas,
tactical write-offs, new tax rules, and a host of items that are all part of
a public corporation's disclosure.
Myself, I am keeping my eye on the ball and the near-term potential for
MapInfo to be a, possibly the, significant GIS player in the pending 2.5 and
3.0G wireless revolution. Given there are at best 1.5 to 1.8 million GISers
out there growing at 25 percent per year (Hey MapPoint is going to get their
share too!) I have to wonder out a loud about the 100 MILLION Java enabled
smart locators that will appear in the next six or so quarters.
Hmmmm...... Didn't MapInfo just do something for Motorola and what was that
I heard about Lucent? You want speculation? I wonder what Jack and Bill
talk about on the elevator?
MidNight Mapper
aka neil
6/21/01
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Huber [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 8:29 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MI-L MapInfo improvements
At 05:23 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Steve Wallace - FFBIC wrote:
>Well, Joe Gersuk (CFO & Exec VP) has 78,000 shares proposed for sale at
$2.5 Mil... maybe that had something to do with the drop?
Probably not. He and _all_ other insiders have been selling fast and
furiously for at least two years, at prices as low as $15 (MAPS closed at
$20 and change today). See their record at
http://www.insiderscores.com/searchdb/search.asp?ttype=A&ticker=maps :
not a single insider purchase in sight. Collectively, they have sold off
about 6% of the company during that period.
--Bill Huber
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