Cuban is on the cover of the May 9th issue of Barron’s and is featured
in a Q & A cover story titled Wall Street Maverick [link will be valid for this week only; paid
subscription required to read the online version]. A good chunk of the
story is dedicated to the companies in which he’s investing, and one of these companies is one I work for: Tucows,
where I work in the Research and Innovation department and hold the
company’s longest title: Techincal Community Development Coordinator. Tucows is on his “longs” list.
(Don’t know what “longing” is, in terms of the stock market? Check out this entry.)
Here’s the part of the interview that pertains to Tucows:
Q: You also own shares of Tucows, a bulletin-board stock that I remember mostly as a software download website.
A:
I met Elliot Noss, the CEO, at an industry event. We were talking about
peer-to-peer networking. I’m an investor in a company called Red
Swoosh, which is a peer-to-peer technology play. It turned out Noss is
a basketball fan, he has season tickets to the Toronto Raptors. I went
to a Raptors game with him, and we talked some more.
I’d
forgotten that these guys were a public company — and it wasn’t Elliot
who told me. It was someone else, when it came up that I’m an investor
in this other company called NetIdentity. NetIdentity lets you have
personalized email addresses, like eric@savitz.com.
Q: Not my actual address, I might point out [Eric Savitz did the interview — Joey]. Is it public?
A: It’s private. Anyway, those guys had a
relationship with Tucows. And it turned out they’re profitable, making
probably 12 cents a share this year, for a $1 stock, so a P/E of less
than 10. They were generating cash. They’ve been around a long time.
They do back-office domain registration services; they do wholesale
domain services. It’s not sexy, but it’s a low-cost operation. If they
keep running the business the right way, five years from now, I’ll wake
up and it’ll be a $10 stock. I’m not in any rush.
(The company may be “not sexy”, as Cuban puts it, but
let me tell you — that accordion playing guy who does the developer
relations stuff? He’s dead sexy.)
I plan to be one of the reasons why the stock price grows tenfold.
