In the last fortnight I have sold out of Adslot, after being a longer term holder.
I bought prior to the run-up in the second half of 2013 from ~3c to ~10c.
Until now, I have held on waiting for the great potential of the company to be achieved.
For the record I saw that potential to be:
1. huge worldwide advertising market, which was growing and shifting to the internet
2. massive market niche for ADJ in internet display advertising
3. very good product
4. big process inefficiencies (and costs) in the ways that advertising is bought and sold (which Adslot + Symphony) could do efficiently and cheaply, so save clients money) - here I remember how Computershare revolutionised share registry management
5. good strategy and management
6. little or no direct competition in their niche.
Like a few shareholders at the time, I saw the real possibility of a 10 or perhaps 100 bagger, and a real long term business success.
I have held on hoping for this to develop.
Now I have concluded it may not and have sold out. I do say "may not" not "will not", and note that my selling reasons included the personal one that I was overexposed to too many "bottom drawer" long term hopefuls, and needed to reduce that overexposure. But my selling reasons relevant to the stock are as follows (numbers relate to buying reasons above):
1. still applies
2. the whole internet advertising and the ADJ niche seems to be being taken over by Facebook and Google, which know so much about us all and are marketing our demographic and eyeballs to buyers of advertising in such a highly successful way that they are dominating the advertising business as platforms and intermediaries, and are growing more dominant
3. seems to still apply
4. seems to still apply to advertising agencies, but they are grappling with 2. as well (where Google and Facebook are more focussed and cheaper to use for the advertising that agencies would buy)
5. progress has been much slower than desired , but 5. still seems to apply to a fair degree
6. see comments re 2. - the niche seems to be being pushed aside by the Google+Facebook juggernauts.
In summary, I don't see that anything is wrong with Adslot, but I do see the internet advertising game changing so rapidly and dramatically that I am concerned Adslot's rate of progress will not be enough for it to prosper.
I have held on for longer than I should have (could have got 10c if I had come to this point one year ago).
It is good to see management/directors buying stock on-market recently (and I will never criticise that practice), but I do note that the values and volumes purchased were trivial compared to their prior holdings, and could serve to somewhat stabilise the share price in the short term protecting the mark-to-market pricing of their full holdings - so I am not as encouraged by that buying as I might otherwise be.
While I am out of Adslot now, I do actually hope that my reasoning above is incorrect and that ADJ flourishes for itself and its shareholders. So I will keep a watch.
Please let me know what you think of my reasoning.
GLTH
Expand
(20min delay)