Earnings Preview: Vonage (VG)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

This coming Wednesday morning, we’ll get to see Q4-2007 earnings out of Vonage Holdings Corporation (NYSE: VG).  Despite this one being one of the worst IPO’s ever, Vonage still has a cult following behind it.  It seems you can find as many bulls and believers as you can those who think it is a doomed business.

The company is expected to keep posting losses, but estimates from First Call for the VOIP telephony company are -$0.10 EPS on $219.41 million in revenues and next quarter estimates are -$0.10 EPS on $227.8 million in revenues.  Estimates for fiscal 2008 are -$0.21 EPS on $943.48 million in revenues.  Its market cap is $310 million.

Vonage’s history of meeting or beating earnings is a spotty one and a bad one alike.  Analysts have an average price target of roughly $3.50, although most are cautious on the stock and this would represent a 75% gain to the $1.99 stock price.  This chart, if you want to use a chart for a $2.00 stock, has been a weak one for the last 60 days, although we’d note that its lows on each sell-off have been a wave of higher lows.  Its 50-day moving average is also $2.03 and its 200-day moving average is $2.33.

Despite the settlements with the Bells, many still question the viability of the company.  Its legal officer recently announced his plans to leave now that most of the key settlements have been reached.  The company ended last quarter with over $355 million in cash and equivalents, although this number has been reduced significantly now because of restricted cash from settlements.  We’ll have to see what the company lists as a payment schedule for its legal settlements before giving this one the final thumbs up or down for a long-term viability model.

Last quarter, the company added 78,000 net subscriber lines and ended with more than 2.5 million lines in service.  Its average monthly churn was 3.0% last quarter.

Vonage Holdings Corporation’s 52-week trading range is $0.89 to $5.94.

Jon C. Ogg
February 9, 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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