AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

The Reverse Merger Conference is now over and I walked away with both a great education and even more confidence in the future of the small-cap / micro-cap world.  For those of you that think stock spammers and message board manipulators represent the quality and identity of this space, you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The fact of the matter is that the pool of talent, expertise, knowledge and integrity in this space runs far and deep.  Believe me, I’m not easily impressed.  I’ve sat in private meetings with Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers that can’t touch this group with a ten-foot ticker.  Some great examples of all sizes and walks include:

• Tim Keating of Keating Investments
• Richard Anslow of Anslow + Jaclin
• Gary McAdam and his team at Growth Ventures
• Daniel McClory at Hunter Wise Financial Group
• Nimish Patel of Richardson Patel
• Michael Williams of Williams Law Group
• Andre Schwegger of Terranova Capital Partners
• David Baker of Core Fund Management

I could go on but I’m pleased to say the list of talent was too long to mention here.  Suffice it to say, the TSX Venture Exchange sent their business development team to educate more than 300 delegates about why U.S. CEOs are considering the CPC route (Capital Pool Corporation) in Canada.

The forum topics were extensive and highly informative about important issues that surround every aspects of this business.  You can view the list and order the audio/book set here . At less than $400, you are getting the education of a lifetime.

If we have a major weakness in this space, it is our paradoxical nature in which we are bombarded by the “nothing to lose” spam companies, while the best of breed spend their time running real businesses. 

We need to change this.  For the good of our entire industry, we need to stop allowing stock spammers, direct mail promoters and message board manipulators from defining our identity.  Conferences are – and will continue to be – a great way for industry participants to amalgamate and communicate. 

But we are preaching to the converted.

We need to reach and change the impressions of Bob and Mary retail.  Doing so will open the OTCBB and Pink Sheets to a significantly wider audience of investors that will drive liquidity to utopian levels.

How do we reach them?  How do we put our best foot forward?  Web 2.0.  I’ll save that discussion for my next post – but would love to hear what others have to say.

Regards,
George

 

  

As an officer of a small-cap company, you have the major responsibility of making sure your data is secure.  Unfortunately, I also know small-cap companies are less likely to implement surfing policies for employees – and that leaves you vulnerable to picking up malware from sites that shouldn’t be visited from the office.  The results could be disastrous.

More than just lip service, consider this excerpt from a report released by ClickZ today:

Postini calculates spam and viruses to comprise over 93 percent of e-mails, up 135 percent from September 2006 rates, and a 36 percent increase over January 2007. Web-borne security threats from spyware and adware are also on the rise; the spread of online threats increased by 34.4 percent over the previous month.

…and this excerpt with respect to e-mail viruses: 

Viruses were found in one in every 145.5 e-mails received in April….MessageLabs said the majority of attacks consisted of an e-mail sent to one individual to evade signature-based malware detection. 

Lesson of the day?  Make sure your virus protection is up to date and implement a surfing policy that prohibits employees from surfing sites other than those necessary to conduct their work.  As a public company, you don’t want to risk losing critical data, company secrets or anything else that might compromise your business and market capitalization.

Regards,
George

In addition to providing small-cap and micro-cap execs with market intelligence, a big reason for starting this blog was to show-off the stars of our industry.  It’s important because many still regard the space as a run ‘n gun for stock promoters – and nothing could be farther from the truth.

On our AOL Small-Cap Channel we run a segment called Million Dollar Club that runs press releases from companies that report more than $1,000,000 in revenues in a quarter or a year.  It’s a great DD tool and a great segment.  As such, I’m going to start posting MDC candidates here.

Today, I found a company that entered the Million Dollar Club with just one contract.  H20 Innovation (HEO: TSX-V), through its US subsidiary, was awarded a contract for the supply of a drinking water production plant to the City of Cape Coral in Florida. Total value of this contract is 3,140,000 $CAD.

Congrats to the H20 team.

Regards,
George