SNCR saved my butt from this being my worst year in 16 years. Now it is only my 4th worst!

Value stocks have been out of favor for 4 years now. I just can’t buy a Palantir at 100 times revenue and 180 times earnings, or many of the other wildly priced stocks out there. PE’s have expanded at least 100% over the last few years. Not sure why, other than inflation and too many lemmings chasing the same stocks cause ‘they are gonna go up”.

SBH is up over 50% and I am long gone on this one. NEXN and PERI are still hanging in there even though they are both trading at less then 10X earnings and both have a ton of cash. EDAP has a small bump on Friday on no news. IRIX is still doing nothing as is ARAY. Small medical device stocks have been shunned the last 3 years or so. Valuations of 3-5X revenues are history. 1 or 2X revenues seem to be the new norm.

I recently bought OMI and DHX (again). OMI is selling its distribution business and is forecast to make just over $1 a share and is trading at $3, up from $2.50 where I bought it. I think it could be worth north of $10 next year. DHX is profitable and trading around $1.60, I think $3-$4 is doable after we get past tax loss selling and have a decent Q4.

See you in 2026.

SNCR got bought today for $9.00! I still lost about 4% on it, but way better than the 55% I was down a few weeks ago. I would still call this a “take-under”. Last year it was $15. It is my first buy out since January 2022, but still way under the average of 4 buy-outs a year I had before that. Will wonders never cease.

My old stocks are doing nothing. SNCR, IRIX, ARAY, CTRM, EDAP

PERI and NEXN are doing ok but they are still hugely undervalued here at less than10X earnings and both with a pile of cash and generating more each quarter.

I have been trading a bit as I wait for something to happen with my main stocks. ONDAS, GDRX, VNDA, OMI and doing just fine on these so far.

I dumped PRTS at $.88 when they announced a dilutive financing rather than a sale. So I made a few pennies.

The overvaluations are still all over the place IMO. But it has been that way for a few years now.

Not much to write about. I had two stocks beat earnings estimates by 45% (PERI, NEXN) and both went down. Meanwhile stocks selling at what I think are ridiculous PE’s are all over the place. Even Walmart is selling at 40X earnings. Great company but it ain’t growing EPS at 40%. I did a day trade in ONDS last week and made 35% in a day. Another overvalued drone startup, but I had a gut feeling. I also bought a bunch of PRTS at $.75, since they are “highly confident” they will have deal either to sell the company or raise money. I am hoping for a sale. Otherwise just sitting and waiting.

I haven’t written in months. That’s because nothing much has changed. Tons of stocks selling at PE’s over 50 and small cap stocks are still shunned, even when they have good earnings or other good news. I was looking at Kratos (KTOS) today. Decent company in the defense industry. It is selling at about 70 times earnings. Now they may win a large drone contract, maybe. But also, maybe not. I have watched them for years and it is a “tush-push”, gaining 1 yard a year in earnings, but have now more than doubled over the last year. Just insane IMO.

The only stocks I have that are doing much of anything are PERI and NEXN which are in the ad-tech space–the new manufacturing in the U.S. NEXN is selling at about 10X 2025 earnings, growing EPS at about 20%, has no debt and about $2.50 a share in cash. PERI is selling at about 10X EPS, has about $8 a share in cash, no debt and looks like it will make about $1.00 EPS this year. Both are still cheap.

My other dogs remain. IRIX that sold stock at $2 a share recently and might get sold to TOPCON later this year (IMO). ARAY, EDAP, SNCR. I dumped SBH after earnings and made a few thousand.

I always look for new stocks to buy, but really am not finding anything that looks worth buying.

Sally Beauty-SBH-Made $1.69 for 2024, estimates for 2025-$1.83. Trading around $9 or 4.9X forward earnings.

Synchronoss-SNCR. Made $1.63 in 2024, $.94 in Q4 alone. Trading at about $10. 6X 2024 EPS.

NEXXAN-NEXN. Made $.93 for 2024. More next year. Has $2.75 in net cash. Trading around $8. Trading at 5.6X EPS, net of cash.

Perion-PERI. Has $8.08 per share in net cash. Expected to make about $1 a share in 2025. Trading around $8.65 and a PE net of cash of less then 1.

Value stocks are still being shunned and silly valuations abound. I still hold PERI which has $8.08 a share in cash and is making around $1 a share and is trading at $8.09. VNDA has $6.43 a share in cash, operating at breakeven, has a robust drug pipeline and is trading at $4.76 a share, ARAY had its best quarter in 3 years and after climbing to $2.95 a share is back below $2 at $1.99. The list goes on and on. I am really not buying anything new and am still trying to liquidate my old holdings.

I own these:

PERI-$17

ANGI-$6

VNDA-$14

The markets continue to be dumb IMO. You have a stock like NEXN trading at 6.5 times 2024 earnings per ADR and a stock like PLTR trading at 70 times revenue and 350 times earnings. Who can make sense of this? I continue to buy value stocks according to my formula, but just not as much. I have bought ANGI (IAC looking to spin it off), PERI that is trading at 1X earnings (after deducting the value of its massive cash hoard from its market cap) and VNDA which has over $6 a share in cash, real products and a big pipeline of drugs. Nobody cares about these because they are not mentioned on Reddit!

This is my last regular update. I will likely continue to post interesting ideas from time to time.

I was up 6.4% last week.

I closed out CRNT–just before it jumped to $3.70 on Friday. I booked a 53% profit. You can’t lose taking a profit.

NEXN is finally moving and hit $10 this week, up 120% from when I bought it.

I am still waiting for IRIX to do SOMETHING.

Hopefully SNCR will announced their AT&T renewal shortly.

VNDA, ANGI and PERI all look very cheap to me.