Business Services Industry
STOCKS STUCK IN LIMBO: Invisible Inc. Small-cap firms fight for Wall Street's attention.(Finance)
Crain's Chicago Business, September, 2003 by Murphy, H. Lee
Byline: H. LEE MURPHY When Quotesmith.com Inc. went public in 1999 at $33, it had five brokerage house analysts shouting "buy'' in unison. Darien-based Quotesmith wasn't making any money then, but it expects to break into the black soon. Yet its stock, which sank as low as 83 cents after the dot.com bubble ruptured two years ago, is now stuck under $5-and all the analysts who once acted as cheerleaders are long gone.
Quotesmith, an insurance broker, is a micro-cap orphan, with no research coverage, and its management worries that its improving story will go unheard. "Without serious analyst coverage, it's hard for us to get introduced to institutional investors willing to invest in small companies,'' says Chairman and CEO Robert S. Bland. Other area...
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