Tech haves and have nots part 2

For those of you interested in follow-up blogs, here is a look back at the progress that many of the publicly traded tech firms have enjoyed over the tumultuous past four weeks (see prior post “Tech haves and have nots” March 8-08):

The Haves:

Arise (APV:TSX) – up 87% on the much-heralded promise of even more manufacturing capacity a few years from now.

Bridgewater (BWC:TSX) – down 10% on no news.

Descartes Systems (DSG:TSX) – stock essentially flat.

DragonWave (DWI:TSX) – down another 21%.

Macdonald Dettwiler (MDA:TSX) – down 10% on the news of the Industry Minister’s preliminary decision to hold up the space systems sale.

MKS (MKX:TSX) – up 53% as a major shareblock was cleared out at $1.50 and news that 300,000 shares were recently acquired by insiders. Good dividend as well (see prior post “Just sit tight – unless you’ve got the chance to raise capital” Jan 22-08). MKS is a Wellington Financial Fund I portfolio co.

Open Text (OTC:TSX) – up 11%.

The Have Nots:

Espial (ESP:TSX) – down another 15%.

Evertz (ET:TSX) – up about 11%.

Nortel (NT:TSX) – stock up 3%.

Redline (RDL:TSX) – down another 43% to a close of $0.91. Having raised US$21.6 million at US$1.96 on the AIM IPO on December 6, 2006 (net of issuance costs of US$3.88MM), US$27.7 million on the TSX IPO at C$ on October 25, 2007 (net of issuance costs of US$3MM), things are only getting worse. With Dec. 31/07 cash of US$28.7MM, A/R of US$17.4MM, and inventory of US$9MM, the current market cap. of less than C$20MM is quite telling. In addition, the provision for doubtful A/R grew from 2% as at 2006 FYE to 7% as at 2007 FYE; and that’s after US$1.224MM of bad debt was written off. Trouble with customers is never fun.

Sandvine (SVC:TSX) – the Entrepreneur of the Year is up 10% (see prior posts “Sandvine CEO named ‘Entrepreneur of the year’” May 30-07 and “Sandvine gets taken out and shot” March 7-08).

MRM
(disclosure – I own MKS)