Waterloo Tech Digest - August 5, 2008
Compiled and written by
Gary Will
gary@garywill.com
In this issue:
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
BERESKIN & PARR - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
Bereskin & Parr is a leading Canadian intellectual property law firm on your doorstep. Our Waterloo region office brings a wealth of experience to serve the growing high technology and manufacturing communities in Canada's Technology Triangle and surrounding areas. Bereskin & Parr's practice encompasses all areas of intellectual property from patents to trade marks and related litigation. Please contact Tim Sinnott (tsinnott@bereskinparr.com) or Jason Hynes (jhynes@bereskinparr.com), at (519) 783-3210 for more information.
IT SEARCH AND PLACEMENT SERVICES
Procom is currently ranked as the 4th largest IT professional services firm in Canada. (Branham 300, Financial Post, April 2007). Recently awarded one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies, Procom is a proud, Canadian-owned, privately-held company. Our local KW office provides IT, development and technology personnel on either a contract or permanent basis. We are the largest provider of IT staffing and recruiting services in Canada. Phone: 519.885.4331
RISK FREE LEAD GENERATION
From sales opportunity development to increasing attendance for events, Virtual Causeway accelerates your sales process! With a focus on selling and marketing complex services and technology, we guarantee a consistent and reliable flow of quality leads - assuring that your pipeline is constantly full. Contact us today to learn how we can help connect you with your next customer. Call 519-886-1600 ext. 405 or email marketing@v-causeway.com for details.
DELOITTE - SHAPING CANADIAN BUSINESS FOR 150 YEARS
Deloitte's technology, media and telecommunications practice delivers a suite of services including audit, tax, financial advisory, enterprise risk and consulting. We work with all types of technology companies, including early stage and high-growth companies, to help them succeed. We'll help you grow through contacts, M&A, raising capital and most of all through great business advice. We want to be your trusted advisor and look forward to working with you. Contact Jamie Barron 289-259-3385, jabarron@deloitte.ca or Jane Jantzi at 519-650-7788, jjantzi@deloitte.ca.
ENHANCE YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
INO can deliver competitive advantage to fuel company growth. As described in this video, INO's optical recognition technology helped Optosecurity raise $20 million in financing and create a world-class team. Further information on INO's optical recognition technology can be found here. Please contact Glenn Smith in Waterloo at 519-502-1305 to explore how INO might deliver competitive advantage to your organization.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[1]---------------------------------------------------------------
Virtek plans to sell imaging & templating business for $26.5M
August 4, 2008
Virtek announced Monday night that it plans to sell its imaging and templating business -- its main business for the last 10+ years -- to Missouri-based MiTek Holdings for $26.5 million. That's just slightly less than the amount StockerYale was offering for the entire company. Shareholders will be asked to approve the sale at a meeting on September 10. The deal requires the support of two-thirds of Virtek's shareholders. If it closes, Virtek would strictly be in the marking and engraving business, which it had said for some time was its best hope for future growth.
Virtek has also arranged a $3 million private placement at $0.85 a share with Royal Capital Management. It will take the net proceeds of the sale to MiTek and the private placement and use $26 million to buy back shares in the company through a Dutch auction process at a price per share between $0.85 and $1.00. At that price range, Virtek would be able to repurchase and cancel 70-80% of its outstanding shares. Both the private placement and the repurchase would require shareholder approval at the September 10 meeting, although only a simple majority of votes would be needed.
Virtek can still back out of the MiTek deal -- under the terms of the agreement, the company has the rest of this week to seek other proposals and can consider unsolicited proposals even after that point. If no better offer comes forward, Virtek expects the sale to MiTek to close around September 12. If Virtek decided to go with a different offer, it would have to pay MiTek $927,500 plus expenses. The company expects to net about $23.6 million upon closing with an additional $1.3 million being placed in escrow for one year.
In fiscal 2008, imaging and templating contributed $24.8 million in revenue, or 47% of Virtek's sales. It also accounted for all of Virtek's profits, as the marking and engraving business operated at a loss. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the I&T business provided just 42% of total revenue but was still the source of all earnings.
Virtek got into the marking and engraving business through its majority acquisition of Germany's FOBA in 2003. It became 100% owner last year. It has moved parts of the business to Waterloo last year and parted ways with the German-based GM of the business in October. In its news release yesterday, Virtek listed "streamlining German operations" as one of the steps it plans to take to grow the M&E business.
Up until Monday's announcement, it wasn't looking good for Virtek, as the hostile acquisition offer from New Hampshire-based StockerYale had been sweetened to 80 cents a share in cash -- 70 cents at closing an the remaining 10 cents to be paid within 60 days of StockerYale acquiring all of Virtek's common shares. That brought the price of the acquisition up to about $27 million -- $5 million more than the initial stock & cash deal StockerYale offered in May.
The revised offer is more than 80% above the level Virtek shares were trading when the offer was made, and that would have been hard for shareholders to resist. Once they cashed out, it would have made little difference to them that Virtek would have been in the hands of a debt-ridden, chronic money loser offering few apparent synergies with Virtek, operating under a questionable management team (the company and its CEO were accused of fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005; the CEO was ordered to pay a $120,000 penalty plus US$788,000 in gains improperly received through the sale of StockerYale shares after the company issued a false news release).
The deadline for shareholders to accept StockerYale's offer was extended to the end of the day on August 14. Virtek's board formally rejected StockerYale's previous offer on July 11 and StockerYale -- which has very little money of its own -- later raised its offer to 70+10 cents a share.
Virtek was founded in 1986 by UW professors Andrew Wong and Mohamed Kamel with Bob Nally -- who remains on the company's board -- and Tom King. Initially, the name was said to be an acronym for Vision Intelligence Robotics Technology. It was created to commercialize algorithms developed at UW's Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence lab. Virtek shares first traded on the over-the-counter market in 1994 and moved to the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1999. The stock hit an all-time high of $7.75 a share in November 2000. Its average month-end price was $1.11 in 2006 and $0.73 in 2007, and it fell to an all-time low of $0.31 in January of this year.
[2]---------------------------------------------------------------
Dalsa reports another strong quarter
July 31, 2008
Back-to-back good quarters for Dalsa, which reported earnings of $4.0 million on sales of $53.4 million in the period ended June 30 (Q2 08). Sales were up 12% from a year ago and down slightly from a strong Q1. However, improvements in margins led to a 4% sequential increase in gross margins.
Dalsa's digital imaging and semiconductor businesses were both profitable, each with sales about at the same level as Q1. The digital cinema business lost $2.0 million on revenue of $450,000. Dalsa has never disclosed how much revenue it receives from the rental of its movie camera, but the implication is that it's a small percentage of total digital cinema sales. In June, it demonstrated a smaller movie camera which is expected to be ready for commercial release this quarter.
Operations provided $9.3 million in cash and the company spent $1.0 million in April to acquire the 22% of Santa Clara-based Rad-icon Imaging that it didn't already own. It had been a part-owner of Rad-icon for several years and became majority owner in 2003. Dalsa ended the quarter with $19.0 million in cash.
The company announced that it will start paying a quarterly dividend this month. Shareholders will receive $0.05 per share, which adds up to a total cash payment of about $945,000 this quarter.
During the quarter, Dalsa also completed the sale of what was left of its Colorado Springs-based X-ray imaging business. The remaining assets were sold at book value with no significant gain or loss. Over the next five years, Dalsa is entitled to a 10% royalty on sales of products related to the assets it sold.
Early in the month, there had been a lot of buzz around a new 50 megapixel sensor from Kodak -- a Dalsa competitor -- but Denmark's Phase One quickly followed with the announcement of a new camera that features a 60.5 megapixel sensor from Dalsa.
[3]---------------------------------------------------------------
Sandvine withdraws revenue guidance after another weak quarter
July 8, 2008
It was an improvement from the previous quarter, but sales of $11.1 million in the period ended May 31 (Q2 08) still fell far enough below Sandvine's expectations that the company withdrew its revenue forecasts for the year. The company had said in March -- and reiterated in April -- that it expected annual revenue to fall in the $80-85 million range, if certain assumptions held true. They didn't, and with sales of $19.4 million at the mid-way point for the fiscal year, Sandvine would have needed revenue of $30 million a quarter for the rest of the year just to hit the low end of its forecast.
Sales were up 34% from a disastrous Q1 but down 45% from last year. Sandvine lost $4.6 million -- a $2.6 million improvement from the previous quarter -- with a loss from operations of $5.6 million.
Operations used $5.1 million in cash in Q2 with an additional $752,000 spent to repurchase shares in the company. Sandvine ended the quarter with $99.7 million in cash -- a $6.9 million reduction from the end of Q1.
The company won 12 new customers in the quarter. Most revenue continued to come from just a few customers, but it was a little more distributed this quarter with four customers accounting for 62% of sales. The infamous "Customer A" -- the one generally believed to be Comcast -- provided just $1.25 million in revenue, down from $9.5 million a year ago and $2.0 million in Q1. One of the four major customers in the quarter was a reseller. Sales to Europe/Middle East/Africa rebounded from a Q1 slump and accounted for a quarter of all revenue.
Sandvine added eight people to its sales and marketing team in the quarter, including six sales reps.
[4]---------------------------------------------------------------
RDM sales continue to fall well below forecasts
July 31, 2008
Another very disappointing quarter for RDM, which has been way below its forecasts each quarter this year. The company lost $298,000 on sales of $5.2 million in the period ended June 30 (Q3 08). The loss would have been worse, except RDM recognized a $559,000 accounting gain on its sale of Xign from last year after it received the balance of the acquisition price -- which had been held in escrow. Sales were down 23% from both Q2 and last year.
It's been a brutal year for the company's revenue forecasts. It began the year predicting that revenue would grow in line with the levels of the pervious two years -- 39% in 2007 and 25% in 2006. After Q1 was a dud, RDM said it would still see annual growth of 10-15%, which would have required 40% year-over-year growth over the remaining three quarters of the year. Then Q2 fell way below expectations and RDM said sales would be flat year-over-year, which again would have required 40% growth in the last two quarters of the year. Now, with Q3 well below last year's numbers, the company says it expects Q4 will be an improvement, but still below last year's levels. It now expects annual revenue to decline about 23% for the year.
In Q3, operations used $1.5 million in cash, which was partly offset by the $1.1 million RDM received for Xign (now JPMorgan Xign). The company still has plenty of cash, holding $17.1 million, down $743,000 from the end of Q2.
Volume on RDM's ITMS image & transaction system increased to 2.8 million items a week, up from 2.5 million in the previous quarter. The company shipped 7,500 scanners in the quarter, down from 10,300 in Q2.
[5]---------------------------------------------------------------
STOCK REPORT: Falling prices for RDM, Sandvine ... and Dalsa
June 2008
Last month's rebound in Sandvine shares was short-lived as the stock had its second-worst month ever in July, falling as low as 87 cents at one point. It closed Friday at $1.02. Sandvine has 73 cents per share in cash, so its business is being assigned very little value by investors -- a big change from the days 11 months ago when investors thought Sandvine was a billion-dollar company. Sandvine shares are down 73% this year and 86% over the last 10 months.
The biggest decliner in July was RDM stock, which fell below $1 for the first time in over two-and-a-half years and finished the month at $1.01. That wasn't a shock, given the company's financial results, but it was surprising to see Dalsa shares record their worst month in three years. The results were good, and the declines all came before the financials were released on July 31, but there was very little pop for the stock on August 1 once the numbers were in.
For the month of July:
Virtek [TSX: VRK] +24%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] +6%
RIM [TSX: RIM] +5%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +3%
===============================
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] -2%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] -2%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -3%
Arise [TSX: APV] -3%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX -6%
MKS [TSX: MKX] -8%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX -16%
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] -22%
ATS [TSX: ATA] -28%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] -33%
RDM [TSX: RC] -35%
Virtek shares have climbed in line with StockerYale's increased bid, and jumped an additional 10% on Friday after Virtek announced that it would not use its recently-created poison pill to try to thwart or delay StockerYale's offer.
On the market capitalization list, Dalsa fell below Com Dev and is now just slightly above Descartes and Arise. Virtek pulled a little ahead of RDM -- the two had similar valuations for a long time until RDM pulled way ahead a couple of years ago. RDM stock has now given back all those gains, while the StockerYale offer has pumped some life into Virtek's shares. RDM's market value was down to $23 million at month-end.
Companies with core operations outside the area:
Agfa-Gevaert [Brussels: AGFA] +16%
Sybase [NYSE: SY] +14%
NCR [NYSE: NCR] +7%
Adobe [Nasdaq: ADBE] +5%
Blue Coat [Nasdaq: BCSI] +3%
Oracle [Nasdaq: ORCL] +3%
ON Semiconductor [Nasdaq: ONNN] +2%
===================================
Ansys [Nasdaq: ANSS] -3%
McAfee [NYSE: MFE] -4%
Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] -10%
[6]---------------------------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Gary Will
gary@garywill.com
In this issue:
- Virtek plans to sell imaging & templating business for $26.5M
- Dalsa reports another strong quarter
- Sandvine withdraws revenue guidance after another weak quarter
- RDM sales continue to fall well below forecasts
- STOCK REPORT: Falling prices for RDM, Sandvine ... and Dalsa
- Miscellaneous tidbits from J2Play, LiveHive, AideRSS, Desire2Learn, RIM, Open Text, Christie
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
BERESKIN & PARR - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW
Bereskin & Parr is a leading Canadian intellectual property law firm on your doorstep. Our Waterloo region office brings a wealth of experience to serve the growing high technology and manufacturing communities in Canada's Technology Triangle and surrounding areas. Bereskin & Parr's practice encompasses all areas of intellectual property from patents to trade marks and related litigation. Please contact Tim Sinnott (tsinnott@bereskinparr.com) or Jason Hynes (jhynes@bereskinparr.com), at (519) 783-3210 for more information.
IT SEARCH AND PLACEMENT SERVICES
Procom is currently ranked as the 4th largest IT professional services firm in Canada. (Branham 300, Financial Post, April 2007). Recently awarded one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies, Procom is a proud, Canadian-owned, privately-held company. Our local KW office provides IT, development and technology personnel on either a contract or permanent basis. We are the largest provider of IT staffing and recruiting services in Canada. Phone: 519.885.4331
RISK FREE LEAD GENERATION
From sales opportunity development to increasing attendance for events, Virtual Causeway accelerates your sales process! With a focus on selling and marketing complex services and technology, we guarantee a consistent and reliable flow of quality leads - assuring that your pipeline is constantly full. Contact us today to learn how we can help connect you with your next customer. Call 519-886-1600 ext. 405 or email marketing@v-causeway.com for details.
DELOITTE - SHAPING CANADIAN BUSINESS FOR 150 YEARS
Deloitte's technology, media and telecommunications practice delivers a suite of services including audit, tax, financial advisory, enterprise risk and consulting. We work with all types of technology companies, including early stage and high-growth companies, to help them succeed. We'll help you grow through contacts, M&A, raising capital and most of all through great business advice. We want to be your trusted advisor and look forward to working with you. Contact Jamie Barron 289-259-3385, jabarron@deloitte.ca or Jane Jantzi at 519-650-7788, jjantzi@deloitte.ca.
ENHANCE YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
INO can deliver competitive advantage to fuel company growth. As described in this video, INO's optical recognition technology helped Optosecurity raise $20 million in financing and create a world-class team. Further information on INO's optical recognition technology can be found here. Please contact Glenn Smith in Waterloo at 519-502-1305 to explore how INO might deliver competitive advantage to your organization.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[1]---------------------------------------------------------------
Virtek plans to sell imaging & templating business for $26.5M
August 4, 2008
Virtek announced Monday night that it plans to sell its imaging and templating business -- its main business for the last 10+ years -- to Missouri-based MiTek Holdings for $26.5 million. That's just slightly less than the amount StockerYale was offering for the entire company. Shareholders will be asked to approve the sale at a meeting on September 10. The deal requires the support of two-thirds of Virtek's shareholders. If it closes, Virtek would strictly be in the marking and engraving business, which it had said for some time was its best hope for future growth.
Virtek has also arranged a $3 million private placement at $0.85 a share with Royal Capital Management. It will take the net proceeds of the sale to MiTek and the private placement and use $26 million to buy back shares in the company through a Dutch auction process at a price per share between $0.85 and $1.00. At that price range, Virtek would be able to repurchase and cancel 70-80% of its outstanding shares. Both the private placement and the repurchase would require shareholder approval at the September 10 meeting, although only a simple majority of votes would be needed.
Virtek can still back out of the MiTek deal -- under the terms of the agreement, the company has the rest of this week to seek other proposals and can consider unsolicited proposals even after that point. If no better offer comes forward, Virtek expects the sale to MiTek to close around September 12. If Virtek decided to go with a different offer, it would have to pay MiTek $927,500 plus expenses. The company expects to net about $23.6 million upon closing with an additional $1.3 million being placed in escrow for one year.
In fiscal 2008, imaging and templating contributed $24.8 million in revenue, or 47% of Virtek's sales. It also accounted for all of Virtek's profits, as the marking and engraving business operated at a loss. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the I&T business provided just 42% of total revenue but was still the source of all earnings.
Virtek got into the marking and engraving business through its majority acquisition of Germany's FOBA in 2003. It became 100% owner last year. It has moved parts of the business to Waterloo last year and parted ways with the German-based GM of the business in October. In its news release yesterday, Virtek listed "streamlining German operations" as one of the steps it plans to take to grow the M&E business.
Up until Monday's announcement, it wasn't looking good for Virtek, as the hostile acquisition offer from New Hampshire-based StockerYale had been sweetened to 80 cents a share in cash -- 70 cents at closing an the remaining 10 cents to be paid within 60 days of StockerYale acquiring all of Virtek's common shares. That brought the price of the acquisition up to about $27 million -- $5 million more than the initial stock & cash deal StockerYale offered in May.
The revised offer is more than 80% above the level Virtek shares were trading when the offer was made, and that would have been hard for shareholders to resist. Once they cashed out, it would have made little difference to them that Virtek would have been in the hands of a debt-ridden, chronic money loser offering few apparent synergies with Virtek, operating under a questionable management team (the company and its CEO were accused of fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005; the CEO was ordered to pay a $120,000 penalty plus US$788,000 in gains improperly received through the sale of StockerYale shares after the company issued a false news release).
The deadline for shareholders to accept StockerYale's offer was extended to the end of the day on August 14. Virtek's board formally rejected StockerYale's previous offer on July 11 and StockerYale -- which has very little money of its own -- later raised its offer to 70+10 cents a share.
Virtek was founded in 1986 by UW professors Andrew Wong and Mohamed Kamel with Bob Nally -- who remains on the company's board -- and Tom King. Initially, the name was said to be an acronym for Vision Intelligence Robotics Technology. It was created to commercialize algorithms developed at UW's Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence lab. Virtek shares first traded on the over-the-counter market in 1994 and moved to the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1999. The stock hit an all-time high of $7.75 a share in November 2000. Its average month-end price was $1.11 in 2006 and $0.73 in 2007, and it fell to an all-time low of $0.31 in January of this year.
[2]---------------------------------------------------------------
Dalsa reports another strong quarter
July 31, 2008
Back-to-back good quarters for Dalsa, which reported earnings of $4.0 million on sales of $53.4 million in the period ended June 30 (Q2 08). Sales were up 12% from a year ago and down slightly from a strong Q1. However, improvements in margins led to a 4% sequential increase in gross margins.
Dalsa's digital imaging and semiconductor businesses were both profitable, each with sales about at the same level as Q1. The digital cinema business lost $2.0 million on revenue of $450,000. Dalsa has never disclosed how much revenue it receives from the rental of its movie camera, but the implication is that it's a small percentage of total digital cinema sales. In June, it demonstrated a smaller movie camera which is expected to be ready for commercial release this quarter.
Operations provided $9.3 million in cash and the company spent $1.0 million in April to acquire the 22% of Santa Clara-based Rad-icon Imaging that it didn't already own. It had been a part-owner of Rad-icon for several years and became majority owner in 2003. Dalsa ended the quarter with $19.0 million in cash.
The company announced that it will start paying a quarterly dividend this month. Shareholders will receive $0.05 per share, which adds up to a total cash payment of about $945,000 this quarter.
During the quarter, Dalsa also completed the sale of what was left of its Colorado Springs-based X-ray imaging business. The remaining assets were sold at book value with no significant gain or loss. Over the next five years, Dalsa is entitled to a 10% royalty on sales of products related to the assets it sold.
Early in the month, there had been a lot of buzz around a new 50 megapixel sensor from Kodak -- a Dalsa competitor -- but Denmark's Phase One quickly followed with the announcement of a new camera that features a 60.5 megapixel sensor from Dalsa.
[3]---------------------------------------------------------------
Sandvine withdraws revenue guidance after another weak quarter
July 8, 2008
It was an improvement from the previous quarter, but sales of $11.1 million in the period ended May 31 (Q2 08) still fell far enough below Sandvine's expectations that the company withdrew its revenue forecasts for the year. The company had said in March -- and reiterated in April -- that it expected annual revenue to fall in the $80-85 million range, if certain assumptions held true. They didn't, and with sales of $19.4 million at the mid-way point for the fiscal year, Sandvine would have needed revenue of $30 million a quarter for the rest of the year just to hit the low end of its forecast.
Sales were up 34% from a disastrous Q1 but down 45% from last year. Sandvine lost $4.6 million -- a $2.6 million improvement from the previous quarter -- with a loss from operations of $5.6 million.
Operations used $5.1 million in cash in Q2 with an additional $752,000 spent to repurchase shares in the company. Sandvine ended the quarter with $99.7 million in cash -- a $6.9 million reduction from the end of Q1.
The company won 12 new customers in the quarter. Most revenue continued to come from just a few customers, but it was a little more distributed this quarter with four customers accounting for 62% of sales. The infamous "Customer A" -- the one generally believed to be Comcast -- provided just $1.25 million in revenue, down from $9.5 million a year ago and $2.0 million in Q1. One of the four major customers in the quarter was a reseller. Sales to Europe/Middle East/Africa rebounded from a Q1 slump and accounted for a quarter of all revenue.
Sandvine added eight people to its sales and marketing team in the quarter, including six sales reps.
[4]---------------------------------------------------------------
RDM sales continue to fall well below forecasts
July 31, 2008
Another very disappointing quarter for RDM, which has been way below its forecasts each quarter this year. The company lost $298,000 on sales of $5.2 million in the period ended June 30 (Q3 08). The loss would have been worse, except RDM recognized a $559,000 accounting gain on its sale of Xign from last year after it received the balance of the acquisition price -- which had been held in escrow. Sales were down 23% from both Q2 and last year.
It's been a brutal year for the company's revenue forecasts. It began the year predicting that revenue would grow in line with the levels of the pervious two years -- 39% in 2007 and 25% in 2006. After Q1 was a dud, RDM said it would still see annual growth of 10-15%, which would have required 40% year-over-year growth over the remaining three quarters of the year. Then Q2 fell way below expectations and RDM said sales would be flat year-over-year, which again would have required 40% growth in the last two quarters of the year. Now, with Q3 well below last year's numbers, the company says it expects Q4 will be an improvement, but still below last year's levels. It now expects annual revenue to decline about 23% for the year.
In Q3, operations used $1.5 million in cash, which was partly offset by the $1.1 million RDM received for Xign (now JPMorgan Xign). The company still has plenty of cash, holding $17.1 million, down $743,000 from the end of Q2.
Volume on RDM's ITMS image & transaction system increased to 2.8 million items a week, up from 2.5 million in the previous quarter. The company shipped 7,500 scanners in the quarter, down from 10,300 in Q2.
[5]---------------------------------------------------------------
STOCK REPORT: Falling prices for RDM, Sandvine ... and Dalsa
June 2008
Last month's rebound in Sandvine shares was short-lived as the stock had its second-worst month ever in July, falling as low as 87 cents at one point. It closed Friday at $1.02. Sandvine has 73 cents per share in cash, so its business is being assigned very little value by investors -- a big change from the days 11 months ago when investors thought Sandvine was a billion-dollar company. Sandvine shares are down 73% this year and 86% over the last 10 months.
The biggest decliner in July was RDM stock, which fell below $1 for the first time in over two-and-a-half years and finished the month at $1.01. That wasn't a shock, given the company's financial results, but it was surprising to see Dalsa shares record their worst month in three years. The results were good, and the declines all came before the financials were released on July 31, but there was very little pop for the stock on August 1 once the numbers were in.
For the month of July:
Virtek [TSX: VRK] +24%
Biorem [TSXV: BRM] +6%
RIM [TSX: RIM] +5%
Descartes [TSX: DSG] +3%
===============================
TurboSonic [OTCBB: TSTA] -2%
Open Text [TSX: OTC] -2%
Com Dev [TSX: CDV] -3%
Arise [TSX: APV] -3%
--S&P TSX COMPOSITE INDEX -6%
MKS [TSX: MKX] -8%
--S&P TSX VENTURE INDEX -16%
Dalsa [TSX: DSA] -22%
ATS [TSX: ATA] -28%
Sandvine [TSX: SVC] -33%
RDM [TSX: RC] -35%
Virtek shares have climbed in line with StockerYale's increased bid, and jumped an additional 10% on Friday after Virtek announced that it would not use its recently-created poison pill to try to thwart or delay StockerYale's offer.
On the market capitalization list, Dalsa fell below Com Dev and is now just slightly above Descartes and Arise. Virtek pulled a little ahead of RDM -- the two had similar valuations for a long time until RDM pulled way ahead a couple of years ago. RDM stock has now given back all those gains, while the StockerYale offer has pumped some life into Virtek's shares. RDM's market value was down to $23 million at month-end.
Companies with core operations outside the area:
Agfa-Gevaert [Brussels: AGFA] +16%
Sybase [NYSE: SY] +14%
NCR [NYSE: NCR] +7%
Adobe [Nasdaq: ADBE] +5%
Blue Coat [Nasdaq: BCSI] +3%
Oracle [Nasdaq: ORCL] +3%
ON Semiconductor [Nasdaq: ONNN] +2%
===================================
Ansys [Nasdaq: ANSS] -3%
McAfee [NYSE: MFE] -4%
Google [Nasdaq: GOOG] -10%
[6]---------------------------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous Tidbits
- Waterloo's J2Play was awarded $250,000 from Facebook's fbFund. It was one of 10 recipients announced during the Facebook f8 Conference in San Francisco. J2Play's technology enables game developers to publish to all major social networking sites and makes it easier for users to discover the games and play with other users on different platforms.
- LiveHive's NanoGaming platform will be used at NBCOlympics.com starting this Friday, providing its usual array of prediction games, trivia questions, and other interactive content to complement NBC's broadcast coverage of the Olympics. LiveHive also announced the launch of its tvClickr Facebook application, providing a real-time, Internet-based add-on for viewers of dozens of TV shows
- AideRSS has made its PostRank "social engagement analysis" technology -- the algorithms it uses to rank blog posts -- available as an API, allowing other developers to integrate it with new applications. Aurora-based NSC also announced that it has included PostRank technology in its new FetchIt news reader for Windows Mobile devices.
- Blackboard's attempt to have Desire2Learn held in contempt of court was rejected by the judge in Texas. Blackboard claimed that the changes Desire2Learn made to its product were not enough to avoid infringing on Blackboard's hanging-by-a-few-threads patent. The judge had placed an injunction against sales of the infringing product. Desire2Learn then upgraded its U.S. customers to a revised product which it says no longer infringes. Blackboard has threatened to sue Desire2Learn for patent infringement all over again.
- The Record reported that RIM was the buyer of the former Spheral Solar plant in Cambridge. ATS said in June that it had sold the 193,000 square-foot building -- located near the 401 below the Toyota plant -- for $16 million. The site was also listed as the principal office of Photowatt when ATS was trying to spin that business out through an IPO.
- Open Text has acquired Seattle's eMotion from Corbis Corp. for about $5 million. It will become part of Open Text's Artesia group, which develops products for managing digital marketing assets. eMotion had been acquired by Corbis in 2005.
- The new video wall at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, featuring dozens of projectors from Christie Digital, was unveiled in July. Gerry Remers was among a group that rang the opening bell at the exchange on July 21.
posted by Gary Will at 1:19 AM
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