The entire interview with Chuck Goldblum of Hurley Capital is part of our new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com
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Hi, Chuck. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your firm, Emancipation Capital?
Charles Goldblum: Emancipation Capital is a deep-value hedge fund with a focus on investing in technology companies. We’re primarily involved in software names. I was previously a sell-side analyst in the supply-chain sector. In addition to consulting for Emancipation, I run my own asset management firm.
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Jacada Ltd. (Nasdaq: JCDA), a leading provider of unified desktop and process optimization solutions for customer service operations, announced today that they’ve sold their Application Modernization Business to Software AG for $26 million. Effective date of the transaction is January 1, 2008.
This deal seems to be about focus — about positioning Jacada as a pureplay in the call center solutions business. The firm provides a single, unified workspace for customer service organizations managing lots of legacy and disparate software systems.
Jacada President (and new CEO, actually), Paul O’Callaghan, said of the deal, “During the past 3 years, our call center solutions business has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 61% and represents 95% of our $12.9 million backlog as of September 30, 2007. We expect that the growth we have seen in this business will continue at a similar pace throughout 2008.”
Sounds pretty good. We’ve written about Jacada positively before and like the direction the company is taking. Along with the deal, we’ve seen Paul emerge as the new CEO with the founder and former CEO, Gideon Hollander, sliding into the Chairman seat. This is a company maturing and taking the right, and albeit tough, steps of the founder stepping aside.
O’Callaghan joined Jacada as President in May 2006, after successfully holding senior management roles in companies including Optio Software, Cisco Systems, IMNET Systems, XACCT Technologies, Idapta and Network Systems Corporation.
His experience in sale-oriented tech firms has allowed the company to grow its pipeline of new deals and land material type deals like recently announced deals with Central Hudson Gas & Electric, a regulated gas and electricity provider serving approximately 367,000 customers in eight counties of New York State’s Mid-Hudson River Valley.
Keep in mind the company has a market cap under $80 million and a cash position of $35 million. Add another infusion of cash to a company that had guided for 2007 revenue growth of 23 - 27% and get the firm completely focused on the call center business growing at a CAGR of 60% + and you have a nice little Israeli microcap.
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Author does not hold a position in JCDA.
Zack Miller
IsraelNewsletter.com
Jacada (Nasdaq: JCDA), the Israeli software provider for unified customer service, has been murmuring about a material deal back in early August. Israel Opportunity Investor’s Aaron Katsman recently covered the announcement of the deal with Central Hudson Gas & Electric. Well, there’s another material announcement. This time it’s with O2 UK, the leading provider of mobile services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom.
Elbit Systems (Nasdaq: ESLT) out with strong earnings Wednesday with a posted 41 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on higher revenues and forecast a better performance in 2008. We chose Elbit as one of Israel Opportunity Investor’s “7 Touchdown Stocks” recently.
Gilat Satellite (Nasdaq: GILT) reported earnings for the 3rd quarter that more than doubled as the company increased revenue and held back costs. We wrote recently about why Gilat might be an interesting play right here.
NICE Systems (Nasdaq: NICE) announced that it has expanded its relationship with DirectTV (NYSE: DTV).
Written by: Aaron Katsman | September 19, 2007
By Aaron Katsman
IsraelNewsletter.com
Jacada(JCDA), a leading provider of unified desktop and process optimization solutions for customer service operations, yesterday annouced the signing of another deal with a public utility, worth to be an estimated $1 million in revenue. This is great news for Jacada. Jacada continues to sign deals. This is the 4th utility to do a deal with Jacada recently, and add to it the deal with Harrah’s(HET), and Jacada seems to be executing their business model to perfection.
With a market cap of about $73 million, and almost $36 million in cash, Jacada is still flying under Wall Street’s radar, but high profile deals will surely help in getting the company discovered and that should energize the stock price.
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Disclosure: Author’s fund is long JCDA as of 9/19/07. Author has no positions in any other companies mentioned.
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Aaron Katsman is the lead portfolio manager for the Israel Growth Portfolio and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. For more information, go to www.israelnewsletter.com or call 1-888-327-6179, or email aaron@profile-financial.com.
