I’m going to nibble a few more shares of TST. I didn’t get filled on many of my orders last week and I’m going to put in a few bids over the next few days this week and next to finish building this position up into a small position. Consider this a Trade Alert for all of the times I’ll bid on this thing today and/or in the next week or so.
TheStreet reported a weak quarterly report with year over year declines in subscribers and revenue yesterday morning. That said, as I’d noted when I sent out the initial Trade Alert last week, I am investing in the new CEO and management at this company with its long-term turnaround prospects and extremely cheap valuation — not because business has been booming. I’ll be very concerned if subscriber and revenue growth aren’t up year over year NEXT year after their new management and vision have had four full quarters of working.
Aside from the numbers, and more importantly at this stage, here’s what stood out to me in the commentary from earnings report conference call:
“Among our highlights, our focus on mobile traffic as a means of distribution led to a 10% gain in mobile visits in the third quarter, topping desktop for the first time. We launched our BoardEx app and are working with Apple to launch a unified app for our Street, RealMoney and Action Alerts PLUS products in the first quarter.”
And later, this:
“We’ve recently partnered with Amazon to provide our financial reporting and market analysis to homes around the world through the Amazon Echo. I have to say this is pretty cool. Now, when you say, Alexa, what’s the news, our content will be part of that answer. We are particularly excited about the potential reach this gives our B2C businesses.”
“Our overriding strategy going forward is to expand our audience through new distribution channels, mobile, social, partnership and events.”
And finally — this:
“And so a lot of the investing we’re doing on those is in how do we deliver them better, particularly in a mobile environment…”
Getting into the Amazon Echo platform, investing in apps and mobile and social…these are the kinds of things that position the company for growth this year and onward. No doubt there’s a lot of moving parts and the company’s got to move fast. Much of that is already reflected in the stock price of course.
What’s clear is this — if the company can get back on growth and start generating even just a few million dollars of earnings and cash flow from the $60 million in sales it does each year, you envision a 10-15x multiple on those earnings and the stock could easily be at $3 or so, triple today’s price.
I’ll be sending out a note about the markets and other commentary later, so keep an eye out for that.