Dip buying riskier

Dip Buying Riskier Now Than In 2013 http://seekingalpha.com/article/1986021?source=ansh $QQQ, $SPY, $TLT

Why do movies about white collar sociopaths like American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street remain so popular?

http://www.policymic.com/mobile/articles/79895/wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belfort-hasn-t-changed-at-all-what-this-means-for-america

Worst day 2014 commentary

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2014/01/23/the-worst-day-of-2014/

Blackstone codere

Blackstone

So we are acting as an intervener on behalf of the government. In that sense, I think we have done just about everything that there is to do from our side and we must patiently await the end of the process from the government perspective. We know statutorily that needs to happen before the end of the calendar year. We are hopeful that it will happen sooner, but honestly we are just not in control of that and we're as frustrated as anyone as to the amount of time that this has taken. As to rollout – go ahead, I'm sorry. Mike Malouf – Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC Just with regards to that before you talk about the roll out if we are statutorily supposed to hear by the end of the year, is there another appeal process or something else that they can actually do? Steven L. Komar There is not another appeal process per se, we're at the end of the road. The only option available to the protester is to file a suit in a federal court of appeals. So I guess there is another appeal. But it is a judicial avenue and what it does not do is allow for an additional suspension of services, so once GAO rules the contract is free to move forward, the Agency is free to move forward. James T. McCubbin So Mike if there was a federal suit brought by the protester, they will bring it against the government and that does not allow for the stay to be put back into place, [inaudible] has the wherewithal and the option to allow the work to start and commence. Mike Malouf – Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC So if we are successful in this, I guess I’ll call it almost a fight that you're in here. If we're successful we will know by the end of the year and if we are successful we should start the program in the beginning of 2014. Steven L. Komar Yes, I think that is fair to say, Mike. There naturally will be a rollout of some multi-agency environment, so basically we will have to go through a series of processes and a series of implementation plans. I can tell you that within our environment a lot of that planning has already taken place but in fact there is only so much we can do until we are free to deal directly with the Agency. James T. McCubbin Hey, Mike, in the Q you will see a lot of reference to DHS, and part of it there will be a lot of the agencies listed within that umbrella. So it will take time to get it kick started. The good news is an award doesn’t get issued, all that happens is the stay is lifted, and we are not in effect in a fight with anyone. The protester brought the protest action against the Department of Homeland Security. So the Department of Homeland Security is defending their [word] [ph] against the protester. We're just helping them because it is in our interest as an intervener to make sure that there aren’t any errors or there is anything we can assist the Agency with that we do that. And we're doing that. If the stay is lifted sometime between now and the end of year though, given the holidays and everything you're probably not going to see any real work, commence on even organizing, discussing and holding initial meetings until late January, just because of the holidays and what we're facing. So this is an activity where the first quarter and getting into your roll out, is a lot of the planning phase. The second quarter you would probably start recognizing revenues and you’d probably see a ramp of activity over about a one year period, given everything going perfect and everything else, but [know kind of] of what it looks like Mike Malouf – Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC So have you started ramping in the second quarter of 2014, where you stand is that conceivably after four quarters of ramp, you could be at the sort of $15 million to $20 million a quarter run rate by the third quarter of 2015. James T. McCubbin Yeah, [that’s right] [ph] with the roll out, you could see that reaching that level. Mike Malouf – Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC Thanks a lot for the help, I appreciate it. Steven L. Komar Thank you, Mike. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley & Co. Please go ahead. Mike Crawford – B. Riley & Co. LLC Thank you. Quantify the bookings, I think you said $20 million or $21 million in the period. You said the pipeline was up as well. Could you put any numbers around the pipeline? Steven L. Komar I don’t understand the question. James T. McCubbin Steve, Mike is asking a question on new awards. We had new awards of over $20 million in the quarter. Mike, I don’t track pipeline like you track it on a government basis. I just track awards. My pipeline of awards is well in excess of I mean, my backlog is well in excess of $100 million, because there are different contract vehicles. We’re moving more of a task order-based business towards influx. You’re going to see us start rolling out a discussion on a revenue line of the different product services within the MMS family. At that point as we do that going into next year, we’ll be able to demonstrate pipeline of backlog. We’re just not there yet. Mike Crawford – B. Riley & Co. LLC Thanks, Jim. When you’re talking about backlog and you’re talking about contract vehicle, well how are you estimating the idea new vehicles as part of that backlog? James T. McCubbin Well, I mean with DHS alone a single award BPA were $600 million. So what I’m doing is I start laying this out. I’m looking at IDIQ BPA contract values and period of time and then I’m looking at tax quarters that are being applied against it. So what I’m looking at contract awards though, since we’re now going to a mixed platform, we’re getting anywhere from one to three-year average contracts, which are not like the governments. They are basically a performance-based three-year term, a lot of that $20 million, will be recognized anywhere between one-year and three years just on the $21 million. We expect that number, now that we started tracking it, to grow each quarter. So we literally just started this process in defining our product set and starting to look at how we’re going to capture pipeline and backlog. Steven L. Komar Mike, and I don’t know if we’re ducking your question on the $20 million and that’s certainly not the intent here. I completely agree with what Jim said in terms of pipeline. But I think in terms of backlog we can refer to the fact that in the months of August and September, just within some of our telecommunications management areas, we see – I think in September we did one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different contracts totaling $6 million of incremental revenue, and in the month prior we did another $9 million. Add that to the security aspects and we really get up around to that $20 million mark without much trouble and not counting some of those extra transactions that we talked about there. Mike Crawford – B. Riley & Co. LLC Thank you. So more broadly the phase is certainly fragmented with some companies seeing we have higher valuations. I think just yesterday IBM made $300 million to acquire Fiberlink enterprise mobile management solution. I don’t know if you compete against Fiberlink or what you think of that valuation or valuation of a competitor like [indiscernible] that’s throwing maybe 15% top line, 7% EBITDA margins, but slightly four times revenues and here you are one times revenues. Steven L. Komar And Mike, one of the things that we’re doing and we’re working so hard at putting together this year is really a new capture management financial system that is allowing us to track that. So we can start showing what portion of our revenues are similar to those other companies, because we will be starting to report on that because if you take a look at a part of our business that is the old traditional and submitted [ph] and lower margin with this we’re trying to come up with way to segment the portfolio set of our different products, so we can show what is the value proponent and we’re working on that presently because we want to start reporting that way in the future. As it goes to Fixmo it goes to several of the other acquisitions. There has been a number of acquisitions and the premiums that are been paid. If you look at their business models, we believe are appropriate and as we start demonstrating the conversion of our business model, I think it’s going to demonstrate to everybody what our business or that portion of that business is growing and evolving should truly be worth and a lot of that is just now finally putting something together where we can go to market and we can show that. And we had to work and spend a good part of this year on putting this together, so we could start to shift. That was one of the reasons at the beginning of the year we started it because prior to that we had met with Gartner and we had met with several others and we recognized how close we were to having many of the component parts that a lots of these other companies have. In fact we had some differentiators that improved our position over them. This year has been all about repositioning ourselves so we can demonstrate that and try to monetize that value and get market acceptance of what we should be trading at in the future given the performance we’re making. We’re hoping by the end of the year that we’ll have the tools in place where we can report on it in that way.

Cyber security

'Looking to future cyber security market opportunities, we’re very pleased that as a result of our product development activities today, we have recently been able to demonstrate a certificate based, device identity solution that will enhance the security of internet and other wireless transactions when using mobile devices such as laptops, notebooks, and smartphones.

Whether used with company owned equipment or in a bring your own device or BYOD environment, this Cert on Chip allows the enterprise to dramatically reduce the risk of data being shared or copied to unprotected devices. We believe this to be a technology with dramatic market potential. We are currently engaged in pilots within the commercial health care and federal markets and accessing other target markets and productizing the technology. All as we build the necessary go to market plans to ensure that we make the most of this emerging opportunity.

On a final note, as we increase our involvement with multinational customers, and their service requirements, we are receiving new conformations of the validity of our enterprise level MMS strategy. This strategy will require management to acquire some built on product capabilities, optimize its services delivery and identify an international reach and support capability.

The good news is that each of these requirements is being addressed by the programs initiated at the beginning of this year. We believe that the integration of our several proven and trusted offerings into an integrated suite of cloud and mobility based solutions is our pathway to broader and more enduring customer relationships and obviously to increase value to our shareholders.

We definitely believe that we are in the right place at the right time. And have taken the necessary steps that will give us the tools to achieve growth and success in building the value of our business.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim McCubbin, WidePoint’s CFO for an in-depth discussion of our third quarter financial results. Following Jim comments, we’ll be opening up the call for all your questions and comments. Jim, the floor is yours.'

Widepoint transcript

WidePoint's CEO Discusses Q3 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript http://seekingalpha.com/article/1841862?source=ansh $WYY