Why All The Pumping On HearAtLast (HRAL)?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 29, 9:17AM EST

Almost every day someone named "Wild Bill" at TheCapitalReport.com sends out up-beat news on a small Canadian company called HearAtLast (HRAL). The information comes through an e-mail blast.

HRAL puts out a press release almost every day. Many of them have to do with opening its outlets in Wal-Mart (WMT) locations in Canada. Hockey great Wayne Gretsky’s father Walter Gretzky is the company spokesman.

The company say it does start-of-the-art hearing testing and provides digital hearing aids, and you’ve likely seen their commercials on CNBC.

TheCapitalReport says in its disclosure that Indiana Capital Group is paying it $1.5 million to get the word out about HRAL. Indiana Capital Group does not bring back any results on a Google search, which is odd.

The company appears to be the product of a reverse merger in Nevada. The company annual filing lists it as the 226 Music Group

Over the six months ending September 30, HRAL lost $677,000 on revenue of $434,000.

According to PinkSheets.com, HRAL has a 52-week high of $7.01 and a 52-week low of $1.06. It currently trades at $1.85.

The whole thing appears a bit off. And, Wild Bill, please stop sending me those e-mails

Douglas A. McIntyre

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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.