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2012 Turkey of the Year

In Which we Pile on to some weak picks from the past year.

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, November 21, 2012

Every year, as Thanksgiving comes around, the President calls up a turkey to the Rose Garden to be ceremonially pardoned … and your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe calls up a turkey of a stock pick from the annals of the teaserdom to be ceremonially pilloried, as a reminder to all of us about just what stinkers we can sometimes be talked into buying because of a compelling story.

The rules are simple: It has to be a stock that was teased by a newsletter ad over the past year and covered in this space, which usually narrows it down to about 200 stocks; it has to have had terrible performance, which usually cuts that number in half or so (there’s a lot of mediocrity to sift through); and the promise has to have been outsized and ridiculous. That almost always still leaves me with a tough choice at the end, since pretty much every year has had its share of teaser picks that lost at least 80% of their value and were overpromised and overhyped … so which one wins the coveted Turkey of the Year this time around?

Well, I gotta tell you, I was sorely tempted by a handful of “this will change the world” junior resource-type stocks — everything from IBC Advanced Alloys (IB.V IAALF) to DNI Metals (DNI.V DMNKF) to the several Graphite/Graphene stocks, particularly Flinders Resources (FDR.V FLNXF), Northern Graphite (NGC.V NGPHV), and Focus Graphite (FMS.V FCSMF), has ended up taking a harsh pounding this year and been pitched by several different newsletters. But at its heart, you kind of had to expect that — these are stories without sales, explorers or folks who are trying to develop new markets or new techniques or technologies or rebuild mines, and though the world was promised we had to know it was a bit overblown… especially as newsletter attention was a big part of the fuel behind their big price spikes in the first place. All of those are at least back to where they were before the hype began, most have fallen further than that.

And there’s usually a biotech pick in the running, too — this time I was sorely tempted to tag Star Scientific (STSI) with the Turkey label … but heck, it’s hardly fair, that one’s only down 50% or so from his recent recommendations, and we’ve got a couple dozen stocks that have done that badly or quite a bit worse. And we already end up talking about that one a lot, our last piece on STSI back in August has more than 70 comments, many from Anatabloc users, and is still going strong.

So what it really came down to in the final determination was two oil services stocks — both of whom played off of the same theme (fracking uses a lot of water), and both of whom had great stories: Poseidon Concepts (PSN.TO POOSF) and GasFrac (GFS.TO GSFVF). And of the two, I give Gasfrac the edge because it was recommended by a couple different newsletters and pushed more aggressively, even as the business was deteriorating, and because even I thought there was something to the story the first time I heard about it and thought it might be worth a nibble at a couple points as it fell, so I get to aim the Turkey baster at myself, too.

If you’d like to browse through the lists of past picks yourself, by the way, you can always do so in our tracking spreadsheets — we’ve got the original price for each of the thousand+ teaser picks we’ve covered since 2007, a few are probably in need of updating for splits and such, but the data is mostly accurate. And sobering.

I don’t want to understate how close this call was, and it’s really just personal sentiment that swayed the balance — so Keith Schaefer can rest assured the he came within a drumstick of winning this year. Poseidon Concepts’ edge in this argument was that it was clearly a business that would get more competitive in the long run — how can you keep paying a massive yield by just building gigantic heated swimming pools for storing fracking water? Can’t someone else get into that business pretty quick and charge less and cut into your margins dramatically? (The answers is “yes” on that, apparently).

Yes, they are evolving and offering more advanced services to differentiate themselves and get stickier relationships with their customers, and yes, for now they’re still paying out that dividend, but it was a gravy train that looked a little rickety even way back when we wrote about the teaser in February, just before the shares topped out around $16. I couldn’t have predicted that they’d have this particularly steep kind of collapse, going from $13 to $5 in two days, I thought they’d deteriorate more slowly as competitors came into their space, but that overnight fall that didn’t even give folks a chance to trigger some stop losses really caught the attention of a lot of investors, and earned a lot of Turkey points.

And yes, I know, I’ve picked lots of lousy investments, too. There are two kinds of stock market pundits, commentators and newsletter editors: Those who will tell you that they’ve made at least a handful of bad choices; and those who will lie to you. I don’t do this to pick on any one newsletter stock picker, and I’ve had a few of these “Turkeys” over the years where I’ve been able to single out a true turkey of a pick at the same time that I can point to a huge winner teased by the same newsletter. This is about the stocks and the crazy “story stock” promises that are flung around like feces in the monkey pen — not necessarily about the editors whose newsletters are being advertised.

And we can emphasize that doubly so by singling out our Turkey of the Year for 2012 as Gasfrac … but also telling you that the award is still shared, by the two newsletter guys who aggressively teased the stock this year, Sean Broderick and Keith Kohl. And we could even throw in a few honorary mentions in the long and sad history (so far) of Gasfrac, including Keith Schaefer and Brian Hicks for teasing it earlier on at even higher prices, in 2011 and 2010, and, if we’re being fair (dammit), to your friendly neighborhood Stock Gumshoe, who owned it for a few months in 2011 before taking a lovely tax loss on the sale and said some relatively optimistic things about it back when it was at the seemingly low price of four bucks a few month ago. It’s at about $1.30 now.

So what happened to the company?

Well, the short version is that Gasfrac was a story stock that happened to have a management team that maybe believed their own story too much and overbuilt and oversold the story, sharing that optimism with shareholders whenever they got the chance. That’s not unique to this company, of course, but it so happened that they’re in a capital-intensive industry … and they probably invested heavily in their expansion before they had enough committed customers.

If you’ve been fortunate enough not to have been exposed to this company before today, I should probably explain that they are a fracking firm — they do the pressure pumping to fracture shale and tight rock formations to release trapped gas and oil. But unique among pressure pumpers they’re not a hydraulic fracturing firm, they’re a LPG fracturing firm. Instead of pumping pressurized water and additives (proppants and chemicals) down wells to fracture rock formations and release oil and gas, they pump gelled propane down those same wells, which they say allows them to produce more oil and gas than the water does. Because that propane can then be recovered along with all the rest of the petroleum products they produce from the well, they’re not offering any new pollution to the water table or using millions of gallons of water (and contaminating that water with chemicals) during the fracturing process — their process is apparently waterless. Sounds perfect, right? That’s a dream “story stock” — more production, more environmentally friendly, no water problems, la di da.

The technology worked, we kept hearing, and the production was great and results were strong … but there just weren’t all that many customers, and the customers they have haven’t been ramping up their usage of the GasFrac system. Which doesn’t make sense if the story is accurate, right? Why wouldn’t customers keep signing up for more and more wells to be “gasfracked” if the system works as well as the company says in their presentations.

Well, part of it is probably that it’s never that simple — different wells and different formations respond differently to different technologies and strategies, so sometimes the LPG fracturing doesn’t work better than hydrofracking … or at least, not better enough to justify the higher cost. Water, though not always cheap and plentiful, is certainly a lot cheaper than gelled propane. Even if you recover a good portion of that propane, you don’t recover it immediately and the up-front capital costs are still significant. And change is hard — if a company is doing something that works, asking them to pay more and commit to a new system that might work better is a tough sell. Particularly if a lot of your customers are natural gas drillers, and they’re having trouble enough with their margins and the profitability of pressure pumping and fracturing as it is. Propane is a natural gas liquid (NGL), and is often produced with natural gas, but it’s far more expensive than “dry” gas — so using propane to produce dry gas is perhaps a tough sell. Not that it doesn’t still make sense — if the LPG produces more and is mostly recovered, it ought still to be a good economic argument, and it can be used by oil producers as well as dry gas and NGL producers — but up front costs may be a deterrent anyway.

Perfect stories don’t always lead to great businesses, or great stocks. Unfortunately. GasFrac still has a chance, I expect, because they do have a couple customers still using their technology on at least a testing scale, and they’ve just pulled back from the brink to enter “survival mode” — a mode where they mothball half of their equipment sets and fire a bunch of employees and scale back to just running what’s already been ordered. The CEO has left, he had come over from Halliburton to spearhead Gasfrac’s expected glorious growth transformation as all their new equipment sets went into operation in both the US and Canada, and the new acting CEO is the old CFO, who has been tasked, it appears, with first making sure that they don’t go broke.

Sean Brodrick touted GasFrac as the “Google of natural gas” early in 2012, looking for a 157% gain. And Keith Kohl touted it as a $5 “cleanfrack” stock to “buy immediately” back in May and thought you’d get “over 200% gains in the next year… and up to 1,500% on your money in the next two to three years….” Both of those guys have made their share of fine stock picks, I’m sure, but this wasn’t one of ’em.

As of now, the company has basically cut back staffing to support five sets of equipment in Western Canada and Texas/Colorado (they had been staffing 7 sets, apparently, and had built the fleet to ten during last year’s expansion blitz), and they think they can grow from the current low base using just that equipment. Their last quarter was a dramatic revenue shortfall (they had preannounced that shortfall a few weeks earlier). Their third and fourth quarters are usually their strongest, so the hit was particularly important — and I imagine the investors who have stuck with them (or who nibbled after the collapse) will be watching the next quarter (the current quarter) very closely.

Here’s what Gasfrac says about what is really the key criteria for whether or not they’ll end up growing (or, perhaps, even surviving), the adoption of their technology:

“While the fundamentals of the overall pressure pumping market are a key factor in our operations, the most significant challenge/focus remains that of accelerating the adoption of our technology and increasing the utilization of our equipment sets. We believe that the production benefits offered by GASFRAC provide our customers an advantage in this environment and that the major challenge for the Company is increasing our market share through succinct demonstration of this benefit than it is the overall market conditions. The key barriers we have encountered impacting the pace of adoption are; demonstration of the cost/benefit, safety considerations, awareness and “inertia”. The key on the cost/benefit side is the collection of basin by basin production data to provide more case studies to potential customers showing the positive impact on production and net present values. In addition, we have undertaken a number of initiatives which will reduce the cost of our service to our customers. These initiatives include equipment configuration and fracturing program design. While safety will always remain a key focus for the Company, the equipment and procedures put in place during 2011 have largely removed this as a barrier for most customers – although education and safety audits will remain part of the sales cycle. Awareness of GASFRAC has increased over the past quarters in the basins we are targeting. Marketing at technical and industry forums as well as one-on-one meetings with key executives represent the key actions being taken by GASFRAC to continue to increase awareness of the Company and our technology. By “inertia” we refer to the tendency for operating companies to continue with their current processes in field developments where they are achieving acceptable returns. This tendency towards inertia drives GASFRAC to focus more on new field developments or identify opportunities which cause the return in current manufacturing processes to be interrupted – for instance reduction in commodity prices or increases in regulation or costs associated with water fracturing.

“While we have experienced a positive trend in the adoption of our services in Canada, the “inertia” described above has been more prevalent in the United States market, particularly with larger operators. We believe the key to improving the adoption in the United States is to focus sales efforts on the independent operators who are able to more quickly assess new technologies and adopt to operational changes.”

Gasfrac is now a much smaller company, with just over 60 million shares outstanding they have a market cap of about $80 million, with about $35 million in convertible debt — so the company has an enterprise value of about $115 million and had about $160 million in revenue over the past year (they accumulated losses of about $30 million on those sales). They are trying to focus on positive cash flow now, with their major cost cutting, and they have occasionally reported a quarterly profit over the last couple years so all hope is not lost, but it is sure turning out to be a lot harder for them to build the business than the last two CEOs expected. Some folks think there’s upside from these very low levels, including the folks at Raymond James who put a $2 price target on the stock (it had been $3), so maybe it’s bottoming out and perhaps this turkey will taste a bit better a year from now… but after watching the stock and appreciating the appeal of the story for better than two years now as the business has disappointed time and time again, it’s quite hard to take them seriously now.

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Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone — well, at least those of you in the U.S. who celebrate our most delicious (and hopefully reflective) national holiday. I have much to be thankful for, including a lovely gaggle of great readers … and you can, at the very least, now be thankful that you get a break from me — you don’t have to read my blather for a few days, Stock Gumshoe is going dark for some family time and we’ll be back to publishing new goodies for you next week.

P.S. OK, to be fair, here’s a turkey straight from my own flock: I think the worst performer among the picks I’ve suggested to the Irregulars over the past year has been that patent aggregator RPX Corp (RPXC), which is down about 45%. I still like it, for what it’s worth, and they keep beating analyst estimates and have a big pile of cash, but investors obviously didn’t like it as much as I thought they would and they haven’t been piling up the new clients as quick as I’d like. So far, at least.

Disclosure: I do have a few call options on Star Scientific (they’re on the way to worthlessness, I expect) but don’t otherwise have a position any of the stocks I’ve mentioned above, save for Google, and won’t trade in any of the stocks in this article for at least three days.

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stewl
November 21, 2012 7:30 pm

Interested in seeing the spreadsheet mentioned above, but the link just opens up the same page I was reading again.

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coherence02
Guest
coherence02
November 21, 2012 9:40 pm

GasFrac and Poseidon are two very eligible turkeys of the year. I think you chose GasFrac over Poseidon because the GasFrac story was more plausible, but that’s exactly where the problem lies, isn’t it? How would you even go about writing teasers for stocks that had no story? One lesson to take away from this year’s two turkeys is stay clear from the story that grabs you. I would be interested in seeing you find in teaserdom the years 2 best “no-story” stocks…as a sort of antidote to the GasFracs and Poseidons. Unfortunately, I’m drawing a blank.

Bob
Member
Bob
November 21, 2012 10:35 pm

Enjoy your holiday time. You have earned a break.

rmiller930
Member
rmiller930
November 21, 2012 10:46 pm

Hey, what about Marine Drive Mobile (MDMC)??? Huge!!! Spectacular!!! Loser!!!! 52 week range:
High: $1.20
Today: $.04
Heavily promoted and then took a dive off the fiscal cliff so to speak…

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hommie
Member
hommie
November 22, 2012 4:10 am

What about Data Group Inc which has dropped more than 50% and also cut its dividend more than 50% since it was promoted to the Irregulars this year. Perhaps, being a Canadian company it should get the turkette of the year award.

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P.
P.
November 22, 2012 5:07 am

Travis,
I have to disagree with one of your picks as “ Turkey of the year” candidate, especially considering you had so many graphite miners to choose from, all of those would have deserved the title ex-equo.

Gasfrac and Poseidon are two totally different stories, though happening within the same sector. While Gasfrac business model has been fading away over a long period of time, PSN share price dropped 70% in a matter of 24 hours, a type of fall which is generally reserved to companies announcing chapter 11.

The general markets conditions, weeks of correction, are likely responsible for such an exaggerated reaction to PSN missing earning and guiding down for the coming quarter. The co. is profitable, it has the possibility to cut expenditures to preserve capital until the demand for their products improve.

Maybe this is just a chance to pick up shares at a very convenient price. Letter to shareholders mentioning the co. applied for a DRIP in the document at this link:
http://poseidon.mwnewsroom.com/Files/37/371ba86f-3a92-4316-b563-bff9730def14.pdf

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Ian Shearer
Ian Shearer
November 22, 2012 7:28 pm
Reply to  P.

No really? Buyer’s of a stock with the name “Poseidon” are surprised their holdings are underwater? Sometimes the crooks give the suckers a clue – it’s best to take it.

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P.
P.
November 23, 2012 4:24 am
Reply to  Ian Shearer

Actually, I wasn’t holding shares of PSN when it dropped, though I opened a position at $5.0 to close it only 2 days later at $6.1. Still watching to buy back a position, the price is going to swing for a while before it settles, I will likely be a buyer today if it looks right on chart.

The point I have tried to express in my previous message is that picking a stock from a list only because it ranks among the ones with the highest price decrease, without taking into account when/why/how it happened, seems way below the good level of fundamental analysis offered by this site, site that I regularly read with interest since quite a while. There is such a variety of garbage stocks touted by the various investment advisors !

For example: Petrobras is down more than 40% on the tracking spreadsheets, would anyone say that Petrobras is a crooked enterprise ? SVM is down almost 40%, is it such a bad co. ?

How about garbage like OCZ instead? They can’t even figure out their own revenues for the past quarter, the spreadsheet says it’s down 76% (which is more than PSN, now down 66% !!) but starting in premarket today that could change to 99%

OCZ TECHNOLOGY RECEIVES INQUIRY FROM SEC
http://ir.stockpr.com/ocztechnology/recent-news/detail/2253/ocz-technology-receives-inquiry-from-sec

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Usishkin
Member
Usishkin
November 22, 2012 5:33 am

My Turkey is all these newsletters pushing garbage with not a gram of remorse. Greedy crooks
This Canadian lumber jack which pushed the Canadian desert to so many people
To you I will say – What goes around comes around. Your deal is signed already

Myron Martin
Irregular
November 22, 2012 12:55 pm

Confession time, I bought in to both stories and have taken tax losses but will put them back on my watch list as I do not think the story is over. Once governments; (federal and state) take firm positions on fracking so the way forward is clarified, I think these companies may be in a position to retrench and move forward. The market hates uncertainty and usually overreacts in both directions when things are unclear.

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aoibhneas
November 22, 2012 1:06 pm
Reply to  Myron Martin

Have to wonder how low both might go what with tax loss selling the rest of the year. I nibbled at POOSF and got in at $4.67. And if GSFVF does crash significantly lower, will look at it. I don’t suppose it would be like Chimera Energy, whose hype saw it go from high of $2.00 to five cents now with trading stopped. Pretty sure that one was a pump and dump and wonder why ceo is not in prison for blatant fabrications.
Saw SAND analyzed on that alpha site as being way overpriced and author looking to get in at $7. Yeah, maybe if gold crashes or people sell off to cover margins on other stocks. I’d like to get in DDD, WPRT and SLW at lower levels

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jfenlin
Irregular
jfenlin
November 23, 2012 2:07 pm

My #1 Turkey by fire is Byron King’s “Oil Kitchen” CVE/HRP – HRPTY. This one moved from the expensive Scarcity letter to the flagship Oustanding Invesments letter. The story cleary has merit on “closeology” but one could not have found much worse on entry poin (my first exposure was in March 2012 with winking about imminent collaboration “Front page of Wall Street Journal” with a house hold name in the Energy sector. Byrons work is fascinating and does to the obligatory risk disclaimers. 2012 has taught me the hard way to be very patient with specs, call management with a few decent questions, if the don’t reiply stay away, if they do pick your spots. When companies will need a lot of money in some way shape or form to eventually get to sustainable free cash flow they should not snub any investor who has clearly done some homework. I find the top secret wink teases distasteful.

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who noze
Member
November 26, 2012 10:13 pm

again due diligence iss advised one should look at heckmann [HEK] NOTE dAN QUALE AND LO HOLTZ SIT ON THE BOARD

paul
Guest
November 29, 2012 3:38 pm

the 5 words to say at a bank to get silver coins at face value. whats this about

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Bob
Member
Bob
December 3, 2012 6:43 pm
Reply to  paul

This here’s a stick up!

docjools
December 6, 2012 12:20 am

My vote is for PAMT. I bought in at $11 and its drifted down to $4 today…

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Ventureshadow
Guest
Ventureshadow
December 9, 2012 5:25 pm

There are so MANY to choose from. As the Three Amigos would say, it’s a PLETHORA of turkeys. Still, we need a turkey with a face, the newsletter writer with the most horrible record. Anyone can make a few bad picks, but the one with the most outrageously bad record deserves the Turkey Newsletter Award.

I know several candidates. This is because I deserve a turkey award as an investor.

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stockinup
Irregular
March 11, 2013 12:26 pm

Travis, don’t be too hard on yourself about the Poseidon Concepts pick (first runner up to 2012 Turkey of the year). It’s hard to read a company clearly when it is providing wrong numbers — major problems with the accounting. Quarters 1-3, 2012, will have to be restated. If you haven’t already seen it, click here to read the Feb 14 2013 report from the company’s Special Committee: http://poseidon.mwnewsroom.com/Files/47/47c2d851-b76d-44dc-80eb-c6b5550224c3.pdf I will be interested to see how mistakes that big were made. POOSF was under 20 cents a share last time I looked.

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Roy Cobden
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