Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Exiting China 3C (CHCG:OTC)

We sold out of CHCG first thing this morning.

The company's sloppiness is a bad sign. They didn't release any details about their conference call until hours before it's scheduled. They did send out a press release with some financial details. Here's my breakdown:

Same-store sales looked good, up 33% YOY for contracts older than 1 year.

They missed on revenue again. The company stated it would come in between Q1 & Q2 which means $64 - $84M in sales -- the number came in at $57M. This included some sort of $2.7M "toll road" bonus that the company has never mentioned before. This is the part that made me really nervous.

We cut our losses at $4.15 without waiting for the conference call. Strangely enough, our buy 2 days ago helped mitigate the loss, down ~7% in my actual portfolio but -19% from first entry, which is what will be reflected in the update at month-end.

The more time goes on, the less confidence I have in this company to deliver on their promises and even, professional communications with shareholders. If the stock does another Telefonica on me (taking off right after I sell it), I'll guess I can live with that.

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