RE: My apologies vandenp!!This may be simplistic, but there seem to be two camps of investors in SCS.
1) Those that are in for the home run, buy stock and hold until company makes profit and gets bought out or becomes big enough to become atractive to the institutions. Buying when the stock is down, but otherwise the short term ups and downs are little more than noise, all that matters is how well the company is executing it's plan, building product, turnover and ultimately profitablitlity. This includes Van, myself.... and probably many of the big insiders that cannot exit until SCS achieves this kind of success and liquidity.
2)The second group are more interested in the ups and downs, will pump and hype when the stock is on an up, and sell into the feeding frenzy as volumes and price appears to be peaking, then wait for the stock to fall back as it will continue to do until they really are close to take off.
In truth, the second group probably make a lot more money, maybe there is something for the smaller investors in the first group (me included) to learn here.
I have taken issue with the hype in the past because too many people, including management were beginning to beleive it. The company was diversifying and at times changing direction without getting a single product line to maturity, constantly needing cash injections and really delivering anything to build a profitable company on. This is a classic error for a small cap and usually leads to disaster.
I figured by exposing the hype, showing the reality, it would be much more difficult for management to continue raising large sums of cheap money in ongoing placements, continuing to dilute existing shareholders. Which I hoped would force them to focus on business rather than raising money. Compared to the effects of the dot com collapse, I doubt my whinging had much effect.
In 1999 Andrew painted a picture of global distribution of consolidator fares through all GDS's where TA's could enter in the route, and the system would come back with the cheapest fare from those on offer from all consolidators, and allow them to book it online. No phones, no faxes, a TA's Nirvana. The product, profitability and fortune was just around the corner.
Reality is that even now, not all of this functionality is in place, and several firms now have internet only version that do offer this funtionality (Read www.Cyberes.com).
The system still does not search for the cheapest price accross all GDS's whereas some of the competing products mentioned here do. And the realtime booking engine has finally arrived two years late.
At one point in 2000 they had abandoned this project all together (no NR). I have badgered them on this point on this BB since 2000 and would like to think it made a difference?
SCS are now genuinely delivering what they promised in terms of systems. However, two years later much of the competition has caught up. Their ace, access to all 4 GDS's was only really completed this year, and is no longer as valuable as the Internet becomes faster, more reliable, more content rich and cheaper for TA's to install and run.. The race in this industry was to sign up travel providers faster than enyone else. Even with only internet distribution, several companies have done this faster and more profitably the SCS. The API they now sell allows some of these companies to distribute via GDS too. But how valuable is this as GDS terminal go into decline. Two years ago, 95% of flights were booked on a GDS. LAtest statistics show 78%.
It's not too late, a good marketing spurt, and smooth take on this year could still work wonders and capitalise on their ace, I am betting they will do it, but I am not convinced they will get unlimited support from the market for fresh placements. It really is time to deliver. In the next sixth - nine months, we will know whether they have.
imo anyway
idle