The present looks pretty bleak, certainly on financial markets, and it’s for this reason that investors serve themselves well by focusing on the future, on companies promising a future that is cleaner, healthier, more humane and more efficient. Let’s share two companies that are offering such a future, and perhaps think tying their fortunes to yours as a small-cap equity bargain hunter.
From Waterloo, Ontario, the home of Blackberry maker Research in Motion, comes Sandvine Corporation (TSX: SVC), whose stock in trade is forming ''Intelligent Broadband Networks''. Sandvine is focused on protecting and improving the quality of experience on the Internet, helping mobile operators better understand network traffic, keep out malicious traffic, and increase customer satisfaction.
Viruses provide a reason for the products offered by companies like Sandvine and suggest the market can be a lucrative one. Some worry (some would say hysteria) was provided by the spectre of a virus known as Conflicker, a virus that was feared would strike on April Fool’s Day. Conficker has infected up to 15 million computers since last autumn, but thanks to all the advance notice, lurked harmlessly, and experts were braced for it to change the way it operated first thing on April 1.
The ''worm'' started looking for new instructions on what it should do next by scanning 50,000 different websites at midnight that day.
Experts feared the virus was about to be used by its creators to control an army' of 15 million 'zombie PCs' to steal bank details, send spam e-mails or even crash a major website. But, likely because more sophisticated means were employed to guard against Conflicker, very little damage was done.
Sandvine works by tailoring their service to the customer. Service providers seek options to ensure a high-quality service experience to increase subscriber loyalty. By extension, billing is moving away from a flat, “all-you-can-eat” fee toward customized pricing models that address a wide variety of capacity, application and class-of-service preferences. Sandvine offers a portfolio of policy-based solutions to address these trends.
Products cater to cable MSO, DSL/FTTX, and fixed wireless/mobile customers of all shapes and sizes, from small to midsized service providers, to tier one producers, to converged networks, to what the company boasts is the world’s first wireless service control platform: the PTS 14000.
In April, Sandvine Corp. reported first-quarter net loss of $4.8 million Canadian or $0.035 per share, compared with a net loss of $7.0 million Canadian or $0.051 per share in the last year. The company achieved these shrunken losses on first-quarter revenue of $18.6 million Canadian, up 124 per cent from $8.3 million Canadian in the same quarter last year.
SVC has traded in a 52-week range peaking last April at $1.83 Canadian, to a gully of 58 cents last Christmas. As a result of the cheerier (if not ecstatic) bottom line news, the stock price lurched near the dollar mark Canadian as the calendar made its way toward Easter 2009, still a bargain for those with a fascination of the tech world.
An earlier piece on AllPennyStocks.com heralded the news of a sea change in the policy governing stem cell research as a weapon in the fight against many known diseases. The loosening of restrictions by the Obama administration proved music to the ears of scientists in the field of not only stem cell research, but other work aimed at heading off ailments, research thought science fiction only a few short years ago.
Some of that new research involves umbilical cord blood for its potential use in fighting many diseases, and among the leaders in this field is Tampa-based Cryo-Cell International (OTCBB: CCEL). Since 1992, the company has helped over 175,000 families worldwide preserve their newborn's umbilical cord blood. As well, Cryo-Cell Cord Blood Bank is pioneering the way in research, to find more solutions to preserve stem cells in a noncontroversial way.
Parents have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to preserve the newborn’s cord blood, and in what is becoming a competitive field, CCEL aims to the leader. With the latest relaxation on stem cell research by the White House this past winter, more of a focus is being placed on the process offered by Cryo-Cell. Cord blood stem cells have already been used to treat more than 70 diseases, including numerous types of malignancies, anemias, inherited metabolic disorders and deficiencies of the immune system.
Cryo-Cell, company literature insists, is ''dedicated to educating all expectant parents, and the medical professionals who advise them, about the benefits of preserving their newborn’s cord blood stem cells''. The company is ''committed to heightening awareness… of the increasing utilization of umbilical cord blood stem cells for potential future medical benefits.'' CCEL’s management team is certain collecting cord blood will soon be as routine as it was unusual only a few short years ago.
In April, Cryo-Cell announced first-quarter results, showing consolidated revenues around $3.9 million U.S. in the quarter ending with February, compared to approximately $4.2 million U.S. for the similar period the year before. CCEL reported net income of approximately $536,000 U.S., or $0.05 per basic common share, compared to a net loss of approximately $247,000 U.S., or $0.02 per basic common share, in the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2008. The net income in the first quarter of fiscal 2009 is primarily the result of a 23-per-cent decrease in marketing, general and administrative expenses and a 23-per-cent decrease in cost of sales.
CCEL’s stock trades in the middle of a 52-week range from 40 cents last November, to a peak of 93 cents in April 2008, around the 67-cent mark. With this futuristic procedure becoming an increasing fact of life (and of improving life), investors as well as parents owe it to themselves to pay more heed to companies like Cryo-Cell International.
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