By the end of the day last Friday, I finished building a new position in the portfolio -- SmartPros Ltd. (SPRO). SPRO provides accredited professional education and corporate training, with the accounting segment providing roughly 70% to 75% of revenues.
SPRO is a tiny company. The market cap is less than $10 million with approximately 4.89 million shares outstanding. My average cost is $1.93 a share.
The largest shareholder owns more than 12% of the stock, recently added to his position, and the chairman and CEO owning more than 6%. Add in some additional holdings by other insiders and you've got a stock that's VERY THINLY TRADED.
SPRO has reported net losses for the last quarter and the first nine months of 2011, the loss for the nine-month period has narrowed from the year before.
I like that the company has a strong cash position. It has about $6.5 million in cash and cash equivalents, $1.6 million in accounts receivable (net of doubtful accounts), $5.3 million in deferred revenue and no debt.
The dividend yield is roughly 2.6% and the company has been buying back stock. The company is also on the lookout for acquisitions -- which is its primary goal for growth over and above the dividend and stock buybacks. There some risk in that (in that an acquisition could always prove ulitmately unwise), but I think the amount of stock owned by insiders means their interests are aligned with mine.
Have checked back here about once a month, glad to see you are around.
Posted by: Patrick | February 02, 2012 at 11:18 PM