RE:Another View
retiredcf wrote: I have held Acuity in my portfolio for the past few years. The stock has gone down from over $20.00 to under $3.00. In the long term do you see any potential of the stock going back over $20.00? The period of time when the stock ramped to above $30.00 was quite unusual and happened very very fast. The decline was equally as fast. We added it to the Growth Model just below $12.00 but It has not been a good experience. At the time, it was very very cheap versus peers and we thought it might be easily taken over. We would still view it as a target as it does have $77M net cash which is more than half its market value. Thus, we think it has upside from here. However, we would not expect it to get back to $20.00. That would be a 9-fold increase from current levels and unless the world changes dramatically or something out of the ordinary occurs at the company, we just do not see that happening. But, it could still move, and at least is up 10% so far in 2023. (5iResearch)
This has been the single worst investment decision I ever made. I don't think it's ever going to see $ 20 and I'm disappointed with Tal Hayek for misleading investors into believing that Illumin is a disruptive tech when clearly it's not. Maybe, just maybe, it can reach $5 in good times.
Excuse me for going on a rant. After 2 years of being on the market, Illumin is only generating $1.2 m in self serve revenue as of the latest quarter. This is the relevant metric to look at. When compared to a company that is generating ~ $115 in sales this is nothing to be impressed about. Also, notice the company never reports client retention rate when heavyweights such as Trade Desk often post about. Why don't they report tier 1 client growth from Illumin anymore? Is it possible the larger brands are not impressed with Illumin? hmmm...
It appears to me the market opportunity is for the smaller/midsize companies and the growth rate will be slower.
If you're going to own Acuityads understand that Tal Hayek has mislead investors many many times. Im just disappointed that I was late to discover this.