Follow up to the last post

I'm in San Francisco right now for a conference and to hang out with my girlfriend. Before the flight out I set a stop-loss on my NGPS position. I wasn't feeling too confident about the recent maket moves on low volume so I set it at 41.30.

While on the plane the stock dropped on fairly big volume. Guess where it bottomed? Yup, at 41.25 and I was shaken out of my shares. NGPS then went on to have a big bullish reversal. Chalk another one up to "live and learn".

I should never have set my stop-loss so tight.

Flotek Industries Conference Call

The picture to the left is Jerry Dumas, Sr. He is the CEO of Flotek Industries and he gave one hell of a Q2 conference call today. He fielded some pretty tough questions from some pissed off investors and handled every one with class and honesty. He even got a little indignant about the market cap decline his company has endured since the Q1 conference call. His commitment to his company's share holders was not only demonstrated when he pulled the plug on a recent acquisition, but was also quite clear throughout the call.

I think Mr. Dumas is one of the reasons why I was drawn to Flotek in the first place. I'm a CANSLIM investor and learned about FTK earlier this year through the CANSLIM Select stock screen at Investors.com. I made a mistake by not waiting for a proper buy point, but I can tell you this, I would have never held on to this stock this long if I didn't have absolute faith in Jerry Dumas' leadership and integrity.

Here's to you and your health Jerry.

Here are some call highlights

1. Earnings guidance is still 1.35 to 1.45 EPS for the year. This means that earnings for Q3 and Q4 will be double that of Q1 and Q2.
2. Sales for Q2 were 22 million. Up 78% from last year. Half of that was organic growth.
3. Operating income was 30.7 million. Up 41%.
4. Cash flow was 3.9 million compared to 2.4 million for last year and 2.7 million for last quarter.
5. Revenue guidance has been revised from 79 million to 90 to 95 million.

Listen to the call and buy Flotek at these extremely undervalued prices!

Flotek cancelled conference call

Well it seems I was on the right track about the cancelled conference call I was worried about last week. It seems that Flotek has broken off negotiations for a new acquisition. I guess the talks went a little long and made the talk at the Enercom conference impossible. A fresh conference call will be this Thursday, August 24th.

I'm glad that Jerry Dumas (the CEO) had the discipline to break off the acquisition rather than pay too much. Looks like it is back to organic growth for a while.

Update: The conference call was fantastic! All my serious questions were addressed. I will write up a detailed review in the near future.

NovAtel Inc. (NGPS) Another buy

I have been watching NGPS for a good buy point and missed the first breakout. It is easy to see why when looking at the chart. The breakout from the double bottom base came out of nowhere and I didn't have a chance to jump on. Besides, the market was still in a confirmed downtrend at the time.

Lucky for me, stocks that make such huge moves on big volume usually pull back some. If this is done on low volume, it is a very good sign. Unfortunately, I missed the secondary buy point again yesterday (having an actual job is a real disadvantage for CANSLIM investors).

Today, I put in a limit order at 44, well below the 5% cutoff window for properly entering a new position. Low and behold, it was filled during the early morning weakness.

From a fundamental point of view, NGPS is a very interesting company. It designs GPS components and subsystems for agriculture/marine, surveying/mapping, and aerospace industries. I've read that it is in the very early stages of accelerated growth. Let's hope so.

On the long end with Digital River Inc.

Well I said I was on the lookout for a good chart and I think I found one. Digital River (DRIV) broke out of a base yesterday with strong volume. The company provides outsourced ecommerce services to companies in the software and hightech industries.

The buy point was at 47.20. I picked up some shares yesterday (8-16-06) at 47.75. I'm not really convinced about the rally so I've set a stop loss at 6% below my buy in. Wish me luck.