February 24th, 2007
After exactly one year, Vonage stock exhibits regressive plateau-ing
Effective with the end of yesterday's Nasdaq session, Vonage's stock has been publicly traded for exactly one year.
While it may be useful to discuss the steep drop in the stock price during the days and weeks immediatley following the IPO., a look at this chart provides evidence of some longer-term trend.
I'd call that trend regressive plateau-ing.
Take a quick peek at the chart and then let me know if you agree with what I am seeing.
What seems to be occuring is that per share, Vonage stock seems to decline to a certain level, hold that level for a couple of months,and then over a period of a few days or a week at most, land at a lower level.
Example- Low to mid $7's for much of last fall, mid to upper $6's for early this year- and a mid-to-upper $5's pattern over the last couple of weeks.
The reason for this plateau-ing is that when Vonage reaches a new low, skittish investors sell but eager investors buy- thus dampening the downward hurdle somewhat. But over time, the overall pessimistic outlook for Vonage and their stock exhibits a corrosive effect on the stock price. When those forces become a bit too much to bear, Vonage stock just needs a few days or a week to find a new, regressive plateau.
Projecting this pattern out through time involves more guesswork than science. But just for the sake of argument, such a pattern could mean mid-to-upper $4's by spring, and perhaps even the upper- 3$ by summer.
But how long can this go on before Vonage either sells itself, or more likely, repurchases its own shares and goes private again?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
