In Search of the Perfect Investment

There are lessons:

1. It’s exhausting to fly New York to L.A. and back for two days. The jet lag kills your sleep. The exhaustion blurs your mind.

2. There are wonderful companies out there. They’d be more wonderful if their CEOs knew how to present and brought along some of their products. Joe’s makes popular high-end jeans. None of their execs were wearing their jeans. Nor did they bring along anyone who was. Nor did they bring along any jeans to show us. An amazing lack of sales skills. And reflected in their awful web site.

Harry: “Would you please use the microphone. That’s why they put it there.”

3. Airlines with upgrades — more leg room and first class — will dramatically drop their prices on upgrades beginning about six hours before your plane is due to leave. Log on and grab a decent seat at a bargain.

4. The most profitable companies are the ones you form yourself. You get founders’ shares at one-hundredth of what they’re selling at now. Your company’s destiny is under your control.

5. There is no shortage of opportunities out there. Is there anything you can’t sell the American public? The simple answer is No. The good news is that it’s much easier today — especially if you can master the Internet with its online shopping and increasingly important social networking.

6. Don’t believe anything that’s third party. The organizers of the LC Micro conference which I attended put out a 150-page book, which devoted one-page to each company presenting. The page contained financial information — stock price, income statement and balance sheet. Every page contained multiple serious mistakes. Like showing losses for a company when it really made a profit. Every page was wrong. That had to be a record for any financial conference. It was appalling. In contrast, the free coffee and donuts were good.

I sat through a lot of presentations and slept through a few. The drone of CEOs mouthing endless cliches is the best sleep inducer. For fun, we started writing them down and putting them into meaningless sentences. Sample: The Secret sauce is a game changer that’s sticky and vertically integrates scalability and business restructuring for an unlimited runway — a perfect ecosystem.” It wasn’t that bad. But it was  close.

Yesterday, the second day of the conference, I found six companies I was intrigued by.

+ INUV runs websites for itself and others which attract you and I and send us on to places we can buy things. As we click, INUV gets money from the likes of Google and Yahoo!. They put banners on sites like this  one (they work with 1,500 sites) and the site owners (like me) get money as their readers click. I run Google AdSense in the left column. Google pays me enough each month to afford one meal for two at a cheap New York restaurant (if I can find one). Google is not making me rich or fat.

+ SALM owns Christian and conservative radio stations. They keep buying stations. They now have Spanish Christian stations. And they feed Christian broadcasting to other radio stations. In case you didn’t know: Radio is not dead. And neither is Christianity. SALM seems to be doing all the right things — from paying down debt to buying more stations in the cities they’re already in — saves hugely on overhead.I resisted asking them if they were shortly going to broadcast in Arabic. They did tell me there weren’t expanding to Europe. “In England, they tell you what your format must be. And you can’t change. Here (the U.S.) you can change from one day to the next.”

+ CTHR (Charles and Colvard) is a jeweler who sells Moissanite, a man-made stone that’s brighter and cheaper than a diamond and stays brighter longer than a CZ (cubic zirconium) . Their sales are booming. To their credit, the CEO presented well and brought along a box of stones we could all play with. He trusted us not to steal his jewelry. I was tempted. It’s impressive stuff. The stones are made by CREE.

+ BOFI  is the Bank of the Internet. They’re growing fast. Their stock is doing well. Open an account with them and you can get money for free from any ATM in the country. The major reason people visit banks, I learned, is to get cash. So, dealing with a bank which has only one location (namely BOFI in San Diego) is not a negative. I’m tempted to open an account.

+ BLIN is Bridgeline Digital. It does “web logistics.” That means they help other companies do better on the Internet. They just got an exclusive with UPS whereby all the UPS branches will be using their software for their local web sites. UPS took a year to do its due diligence on them and picked them over several other contenders for the big contract, which is just now starting. That year checkout impressed me. I don’t understand everything they do. But the little I do is impressive.

+ DDD is an English company that 3D-enables TVs, smartphones and computer monitors. They’re  exploding. They sell to everybody and their uncle from Samsung to Intel, from LG to Texas Instruments. They’re  English and about to get American ADR listing. Presently they’re listed on the OTCQX whatever that is.

That’s it for now. I’m exhausted and on deadline.

Harry Newton, who’s still playing with the emailed newsletter. When you get it, click on the link. That will get you to today’s column. I don’t know why it’s not working, yet.