Overlooked firms put stock in Genesis.

AuthorTaylor, Mike
PositionMoney Matters - Genesis Select

BUDD ZUCKERMAN SPENT 21 YEARS AS AN INSTITUTIONAL SALESMAN, selling Small-cap stocks to major mutual-fund managers and pension-fund managers around the country. It was time well spent. In those two decades he built a mile-long database of contacts -- relationships -- that today he uses to help a handful of Colorado's brightest but overlooked companies gain the attention of Wall Street.

Zuckerman is the president and founder of Boulder-based Genesis Select, an investor relations firm that has helped small public companies attract analysts and institutional investors to their stocks.

"There's such a demand at the major (brokerage) firms for small companies that are outperforming and are undervalued," said Zuckerman, who founded Genesis Select in 1 999. 'The question is, how do you get to the right portfolio manager? How do you get to the right analyst? Colorado is loaded with companies like this."

Colorado might be loaded, but with thousands of public companies in the U.S., even a promising firm with a great story and strong revenues can slip under the radar of institutional investors.

Two companies that Genesis Select has helped are Louisville-based Raindance Communications Corp., an audio and Web conferencing provider, and Boulder-based Intrado Corp., which manages 911 emergency service applications and other critical data for public safety agencies.

In the case of Raindance, the company was trading below $1 and thus was in danger of being delisted from the NASDAQ when Genesis came aboard in August 2001.

"The company was doing well, but the stock price wasn't reflecting that," said Raindance CFO Nicholas Cuccaro. "Budd started setting us up with meetings all over the country with buy-side investors, sell-side analysts, large institutional money managers. So he was able to, one, get us in front of people who were managing 7money and were prepared to make an investment, and also to get us coverage from Wall Street analysts.

"We were down to two analysts covering the company," Cuccaro said of the days before Genesis. "Currently we're around six."

Of course, some factors are out of Genesis' control. Rain dance's stock was trading at about $3 for most of January with a 52-week high of $5.99, but fell to $2.22 on January 22 when Microsoft announced it was getting into the Web-conferencing software business.

In the case of Intrado, Zuckerman says analysts had abandoned the company after it missed targeted earnings numbers for one...

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