SOYO's Aspirations for 2008

In a press release this morning, SOYO Group shared its dreams for the upcoming year:

For the fiscal year 2008, SOYO projects net revenues of at least $140 million, and projects net income of at least $5 million. The Company expects to see significant growth in its SOYO and Prive brands, and a new revenue stream with the introduction of the Honeywell Consumer Electronics product line.

These seem like lofty goals from a company that managed to produce half as much income on less than a quarter the revenue in FY 2007, but they are not entirely unreasonable given their rapid growth since expanding into consumer electronics.

A conference call is scheduled for next week to answer shareholder questions, though admittedly, I probably won't tune in to hear the details. Until they start shipping units and banking profits, it's just talk.

Weekly Summary

Another week has passed, and there's been some improvement in my portfolio, though I still have the sense that GOGB is artificially inflated, as its volume has been extremely low. Also, it's clear to me that BLSH was a bad pick, and a few others are headed into the deep:


Some of these losses may be due to the general state of the market, and I'm deep enough in the red in my main portfolio that I don't need to take any additional capital losses at this time. Neither am I looking to invest additional cash in any of the companies on my watch list, as their performance has been consistently bad these pas few months. In all, it's a bad time to be in the market, but I'm hoping to ride it out.

Reviving Revlon

An article in today's Wall Street Journal (here) details Revlon's plan to revitalize the brand and gain some of the market share that it recently lost in the wake of its dismal failure to successfully launch its Vital Radiance cosmetics line. The solution: back to basics.

The Vital Radiance line failed largely because of marketing missteps. For example, it didn't incorporate the well-known Revlon brand name, hired unrecognizable models as spokeswomen and cost more than consumers cared to spend. ...

This time around, Revlon is playing it more conservatively with its new mineral foundation, blush and eye shadow under its ColorStay cosmetics line ... other new products, including the line of customizable foundation as well as shades of Revlon nail polish and lipstick, also feature marketing that heavily emphasizes the Revlon name.

While the price of the stock has been hovering around one dollar for the past two years, its market share has slipped only one percent, and the company is running well into the black. It may take some time to dig themselves out, but I have a lot of confidence in its prospects for success.

SOYO to Release 2007 Year End Results

Today, SOYO Inc. announced that the company will release 2007 year end results and fourth quarter numbers on March 27, 2008, but did not disclose any details that would support or undermine the general sense among investors that the company may be gaining strength.

I don't expect the 2007 numbers to be encouraging, as the company has only recently begun to scale its production and distribution and position its products within the marketplace.

However, confidence may waver and many investors who (unreasonably) expected the company to be an overnight success may dump their shares. It may be a good opportunity for anyone with a long-range perspective to load up and average down.

Weekly Summary

What goes up, comes down, as the performance of my portfolio over the past couple of weeks has shown:


I took a loss on Pilgrim Petroleum, just to get away from a situation that was starting to smell very fishy, and the price of GoIP has been suspiciously inflated for weeks, and is now beginning to normalize - but values have been slipping across the board and the losses are mounting.

I expect I'll be in the red next week, and I expect that will be an ongoing situation until the market in general shows some signs of recovery.

E-Trade Slipping

E*Trade released its 2007 financial statements this week, and the portrait is more dismal than anyone seemed to expect: a 1.7 billion dollar loss for last year. The new CEO's remarks in a interview with forbes.com, that he would rather face the risk of the firm's home equity portfolio than sell it off (unless someone was going to offer "100 cents on the dollar to buy it") only exacerbated doubts about the continued viability of the firm.

And so, the company is going to continue to flounder, at least in the short run, and I fully expect my investment in it to slide slowly 9or perhaps quickly) into the red, possibly becoming just another tax write-off.

GOGB: Slow Cashout

Over the past three weeks, I've been slowly selling off blocks of GOGB shares. I'd have preferred to sell them all at once, but volume has been extremely low as trades were taking place at well above the stock's objective value. That's one of the hazards of investing in penny stocks, especially the triple-zero ones.


In the end, I've sold off half of my holdings at an average profit of 200% (tripling my investment), but had to pay four commissions instead of one.

Since I have faith in the company's long-term prospects, I'll retain the other portion, in hopes that the company takes off for legitimate reasons.