Investools Hit By Double Whammy (SWIM)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Investools Inc. (NASDAQ: SWIM) is under serious fire this morning from traders.  The company posted net income of $0.17 EPS, but First Call was at $0.21 EPS.  This is on a record revenue with a gain of 39% to $91 million. 

A miss on earnings is one thing, but this disclosure is something different entirely:

  • "The Company is cooperating with a non-public, informal inquiry by the SEC relating to representations by certain presenters in certain portions of their presentations at some of the Company’s seminars. The Company has been cooperating with and intends to continue to cooperate with the SEC. Because it is ongoing, the Company cannot predict the outcome of this informal inquiry at this time, and, as a result, no conclusion can be reached as to what impact, if any, this inquiry may have on the Company or its operations."

This stock rose exponentially over the last 4 and a half years and had gone more range bound over the last year-plus.  An SEC inquiry after a miss is not going to be welcomed by any stretch of the imagination.

Shares closed at $12.48 and the 52-week trading range is $9.29 to $18.23.  Unfortunately, that was the 52-week trading range.  Shares are now down almost 35% pre-market at $8.20 on very active volume of more than 500,000 with an hour to the open.

Depending on what these position claims are, this will either end up with a slap on the wrist… or a kick in the you know where.  So far traders are kicking.

Jon C. Ogg
May 2, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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