Rentrak Corporation Message Board

Ledbed's influence is waning (look at declining volume recently), yet CCUR's stock price is still standing tall with the protection of that big dividend.

If CCUR dropped back to $7 on a big market correction, the dividend would pay a more than respectable dividend of 6.86%. Nice backstop.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

Maybe Barron's piece will open the door to get back in.

Last hachet job on Barron's did in October 2012 on RDN knocked its stock down .75 from $5 to $4.25. Boy was that ever bad advice.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

HOV is up because its CAO just killed the hope of the 30% short float that a very dilutive secondary is pending. There is plenty of cash cashion to defer an equity raise to later (at higher earnings and stock price) to pay of debt coming due in 2020.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

Here is the excerpt from the Q and A at the investor conference yesterday (from Seeking Alpha):

Unknown Analyst

As your debt colleague, I'll try to help. So with the refinancing that you hope to do, do you think that you could do it on an unsecured basis or do you think you have to continue issue new secured debt? And would you consider using equity, at all, to term out the debt load?

Brad G. O'Connor - Chief Accounting Officer, Vice President and Controller
Yes, I haven't had the conversations with our finance guys about whether we would do it, unsecured or secured. I think that remains to be seen. But with respect to equity, I think at some point we would want to do that to improve our balance sheet, because just pushing out the debt doesn't change the fact that we are very highly leveraged. You have to get a lot of income to overcome the current levers that were in. So at some point it'll make sense, but certainly not yet because we're not earning, really, any money. So you've got to get the point where you're generating some level of earnings per share that issuing equity would make sense. And we don't have any need, today, to do that. We're not forced into position to do that. We can wait to raise the equity, hopefully, at a higher price. But, ultimately, that has to be part of the answer.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

At this point, Ledbed and his ilk are a non-factor. Just background noise, if you will.

I would be more concerned about the company, not an activist investor. I went long CCUR, again, last week on the doubling of the dividend to 6%. Now, why is this so important? CCUR's management has historically been so conservative and tight-lipped, over these past few years, that the only objective opinion any long term investor could hold is that management's goal is simply just to "tread water"; i.e. to collect a nice salary and stock options for as long as possible. CCUR management sat on $3.50 in cash for years, while the stock languished between $3-5.

What was Management waiting for? Was it for the MDAS or multi-screen biz to finally get legs? Now, the CCUR is winning contracts for multi-screen with big MSO's and is even seeing a pickup in its real-time biz. What is the most objective evidence that revenue picture is looking brighter? How about paying a 6% dividend at the cost of $1 million per quarter.

And if management fails to deliver, the comfy cushion of all that cash, is no longer there to prop the stock price and provide job security. I think management sees improvement. Netflix and other OTT's, who are cherry picking with impunity, are forcing the MSO's to get serious on spending on capex to deliver multi-screen and enhanced functionality of the settop box.

CCUR is finally positioned to see revs increased with its leading position in CDN-multiscreen for MSO's. TMW, JCOM, Virgin Media, Kabel Deutchland and possibly COX and others to follow.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

At then time of announcement of .50 special dividend last December, CCUR was trading at $5.25.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 9:34 AM Concurrent Computer (CCUR) declares special dividend of $0.50/share. For shareholders of record Dec. 21. Payable Dec. 31. Ex-div date Dec. 19. (PR) Comment! [Dividends]

The stock performance since speaks for itself.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

And consider work of CNBC regular Jeremy Siegel (UPenn School of Business Professor) ywho comes on the show regularly and touts that one of the best measures of future stock performance is the payment of increasing dividends.

By putting this higher dividend in place, management has built a floor under CCUR's stock price. At $7, the dividend yield is 6.75%. If next quarter validates the payment of the dividend (say $18 million in revs), stock is going higher.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

The .12 dividend will require $1 million in revenue per quarter.

Will be important to watch cash on hand. At $22 million currently.

As much as I don't particularly care for CCUR board of directors, they have been more than of late to shareholders paying substantial dividends, including the large one time dividend at the end of last year.

And it's no coincidence that the stock broke $5 when this shift in philosophy occurred.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

We'll see. Publicly traded companies don't raise dividends to this extent, unless the revenues are there to support it.

But you wouldn't let the facts get in the way of your short position.

That's the signal for new and significant revenue growth is coming. I have followed this stock for about 3 years. Management, believe it or not, has historically been very conservative.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

Looking out 3 months is uncertain cause things can change? I don't how about that. Housing inventory shortage is pretty extreme; so is housing affordability (191%) with rediculous low rates. And margins continue to improve for the homebuilders and given the extreme supply/demand imbalance this will not correct itself while the peak of the housing season is just beginning.

And the icing on the cake is contracts signed in Q2 are priced on average 22% higher than this time last year. Those contracts will close in the next two Q's (Q3 and 4).

I would call that a dream pipeline situation.

If HOV wants to build more housing, it has that option. That is a pretty optimal place to be.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

Excerpt 2 from CC:

Construction costs dropping with lumber prices coming down in Q3:

Typically, we lock lumber prices up kind of 90 days into the future, so there's a little lag effect before we'll see the benefit flow through our P&L of declining prices, and as Ara says, there's are a lot of moving parts that may obfuscate what the real impact of lumber is. Lumber represents 14%, 15% of the total construction cost of a home.

Sentiment: Strong Buy